Item #3683 Photo Albums Documenting a Young Woman’s Tour of the West in the Early Twentieth Century. Muriel B.? Mann, Fred Richard?
Photo Albums Documenting a Young Woman’s Tour of the West in the Early Twentieth Century.
Photo Albums Documenting a Young Woman’s Tour of the West in the Early Twentieth Century.
Photo Albums Documenting a Young Woman’s Tour of the West in the Early Twentieth Century.
Photo Albums Documenting a Young Woman’s Tour of the West in the Early Twentieth Century.
Photo Albums Documenting a Young Woman’s Tour of the West in the Early Twentieth Century.
Photo Albums Documenting a Young Woman’s Tour of the West in the Early Twentieth Century.
Photo Albums Documenting a Young Woman’s Tour of the West in the Early Twentieth Century.
Photo Albums Documenting a Young Woman’s Tour of the West in the Early Twentieth Century.
Photo Albums Documenting a Young Woman’s Tour of the West in the Early Twentieth Century.
Photo Albums Documenting a Young Woman’s Tour of the West in the Early Twentieth Century.
Photo Albums Documenting a Young Woman’s Tour of the West in the Early Twentieth Century.
Photo Albums Documenting a Young Woman’s Tour of the West in the Early Twentieth Century.
Photo Albums Documenting a Young Woman’s Tour of the West in the Early Twentieth Century.

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[Mann, Muriel B.?; Fred Richard?].

Photo Albums Documenting a Young Woman’s Tour of the West in the Early Twentieth Century.

Yellowstone National Park, San Diego, Pacific Northwest, and other western locations, as well as Smith College, Northampton, Mass., c. 1913. 3 vols, one oblong 4to, full black cloth, two oblong 8vos, both full flexible brown leather. Vol. I: 195 silver prints; vol. 2: 203 silver prints; vol. 3: 280 silver prints and 8 cyanotypes; total of 686 photos, most captioned in white ink and measuring approx. 3.5 x 4 inches, but also including smaller and differently shaped prints as well as occasional larger prints measuring 3.5 x 5 or 4.5 x 6.5 inches. Two photos inscribed on the verso “Muriel B. Mann,” one noting her address as Chicago.

A delightful set of three photo albums documenting a young woman’s travels in the American west, accompanied by her mother and other companions, and including many wonderful photographs of their tour through Yellowstone by horse and carriage.

In ca. 1913, a young woman—apparently one Muriel B. Mann of Chicago, soon to be a student at Smith College—went on an extensive tour of the west, from Arizona to the Canadian Rockies, with her mother and several other companions, possibly members of her family. The albums document their independent travels up the west coast, from Tijuana, San Diego and La Jolla through such places as Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Berkeley, Shasta Springs, and Council Crest (OR). They continue by boat up the Columbia River through Washington and into Canada, visiting Snoqualmie Falls and eventually travel by train through the Canadian Rockies.

One album is devoted in its entirety to a group tour undertaken through Yellowstone, guided by Fred Richard and noted hunter Ned Frost. From the early years of the 1900s into the 1930s, the two brothers-in-law operated a popular touring company out of their Wyoming Ranch. They led a variety of trips, most notably guiding both Buffalo Bill and Prince Albert I of Monaco on a hunting tour in Shoshone National Forest. The Yellowstone expeditions, which lasted 16 days, began at their Ranch, made a loop through the park, and returned via the ranch to Cody, WY. By 1913 they were taking groups of up to 150 people—more than the total number of visitors entering the park through any other gate.

The albums present landscapes and scenes from everyday life on the tour, as well as several portraits, including photographs of Ned Frost and the very young Jack Richard, noted western pilot and photographer. Subjects include two portraits of women described as experiments with the portrait lens, Mrs. Richard shooting a chicken, the Frost and Richard Ranch and the view it overlooks, interiors of the Ranch and the rustically sumptuous Canyon Hotel, several group portraits affectionately entitled “the savages,” scenes of fellow tourists crossing footbridges and fording rivers on horseback, and so on. The captions are charming and evocative, not only of the personalities and situations they describe but also of the writer. One image is labeled “where poor poor Peanuts broke his leg,” while another was taken “in Window Rock and oh such a climb to get there!” Many photographs depict aspects of the trip which must have been mundane to those who worked the tours, but novelties to the tourists themselves: “drying wet bedclothes” on the grass by Yellowstone Lake, “Shorty and Joe waiting for the roughnecks to be called to lunch” and “a bear at the Sylvan Lake Wylie camp.” (Although bears were common along the tours and apparently not much feared, Frost and a cook nearly died battling a bear in the camp kitchen in 1916). It is possible to trace the movements of this young woman’s tour along its known route from the Frost and Richard Ranch, over Sylvan Pass to Yellowstone Lake, Old Faithful, Tower Falls, Mt. Washburn, and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, among other locales.

Approximately seventy-five percent of the photographs document the western tour. The quarto album concludes the trip, the first third depicting the end of the western tour, and the balance showing life in the Chicago area and scenes of college life at Smith and thereabouts. Since Muriel refers to herself in some captions and hers is the dominant hand throughout the albums, it seems likely that she took many of the photographs. However, at least a few of the Yellowstone tour images are held in the collections of the Buffalo Bill Center for the West and are attributed to Fred Richard, suggesting that Richard’s photos were made available to tour participants.

An extensive and vivid representation of western tourism and women’s experience in the early decades of the 20th Century.

CONDITION: Vol. 1 leather worn through and chipped at edges of covers, spine perished; vol. 2 leather worn at edges but tightly bound; vol. 3 cloth worn at edges, one loose page; very occasional missing or partially missing photographs.

REFERENCES: Gib Mathers, "A Tale of Two Families,” Powell Tribune July 5, 2016; Robert Goss, “The Frost and Richard Camping Company,” Geyser Bob’s Yellowstone Park Historical Service.

Item #3683

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