Susan Shirley and her restaurant in Julesburg, Colorado [manuscript caption].

Julesburg, Colorado, [1880s]. Albumen print, 5.6” x 8.25”, on larger paperboard mount. Manuscript caption below image, “Susan Shirley and her restaurant in Julesburg, Colorado.” Photographer’s ink stamp at verso and pencil inscription, “E. S. Shirley.” CONDITION: Good, a sliver of discoloration at bottom-left, a few light scratches, some dampstains to margins, minor loss to upper-left corner, dampstained verso.

An evocative and unusual photograph of a restaurant owned and operated by a woman in Julesburg, Colorado.

The words “City Restaurant” are painted on the front of the building, and at the rear of the building are two women, one of them presumably Susan Shirley. One woman stands behind an empty chair beside a water pump; the other, a rather matronly lady wearing an apron, stands beneath a tree and holds something up in her right hand, possibly a bunch of flowers. A few pieces of laundry hang on a line nearby.

The town of Julesburg is located in Sedgwick County, Colorado near the Nebraska-Colorado border. The original trading post was named after the western outlaw Jules Beni (?–1861) and the town was on the route of the Pony Express (1860–61), which extended from Missouri to California. Julesburg was also a stagecoach station and the site of Fort Rankin (later Fort Sedgwick). In revenge for the Sand Creek Massacre on 29 Nov. 1864, 1000 Cheyenne, Arapaho and Lakota warriors attacked Julesburg on 7 Jan. 1865, killing both U.S. Army soldiers and civilians. In the following weeks, the warriors raided up and down the South Platte River Valley. On 2 Feb. they returned to Julesburg and burned the town to the ground, but did not attack the soldiers and civilians taking refuge in the fort. The town of Julesburg was rebuilt and relocated several times over the next few decades. The Union Pacific Railroad arrived in the area in the 1860s.

Photographer N. Lundquist worked in Julesburg from at least 1887 to 1889.

REFERENCES: Mautz, Carl. Biographies of Western Photographers (Nevada City, CA: Carl Mautz Publishing, 1997), p. 201; “Sedgwick County” at Colorado Encyclopedia online.