Trip To Colorado - August 21 to September 16th 1900-1902
(Colorado Camping Photo Album - 1900-1902) Harman, Frank. TRIP TO COLORADO AUG. 21 TO SEPT 16TH. LOST PARK FOR DEER, TRAPPER LAKE FOR TROUT - FINE SPORT. Charles Wehrli (Werle), Cady Hamsher, Frank Harman, Frank Gillum, Rifle, Colorado and Hiram the Buster. A well documented Victorian photo album recording three California men and Rifle, Colorado guides through a hunting and fishing trip into Trapper Lake near Meeker, CO at the close of the 19th century. Mokelumne Hill, CA; San Marino, CA & Rifle, CO. 8vo. 50 pp, unpaginated), thick gray-green paper stock. With 100 silver gelatin & albumen photos tipped-in, sized from 3.25 x 4 in. to 3.5 x 4.5 in., nearly all with pencil manuscript explanatory text at lower fore-edge of images, most crisp & clear with excellent contrast.
This excellent and well-documented photo album records a summer hunting trip of Harman, a California newspaperman, Werle (1849-1916), a soda manufacturer in Mokelumne Hill, CA, and Hamsher with their guide Frank Gillum into the present day White River National Forest. The album opens with photos of a downtown hotel in Colorado Springs, and then the mineral waters at Manitou Springs, CO. Subsequent images show the horseback party and chuck wagon carrying rifles heading up Rifle Creek, their camp at Ranger Spring, a log bridge at White River, and their first buck killed, with subsequent images showing scenic views of Trapper Lake, the surrounding mountains, old rangers cabin, and the party's camps at Trapper Lake and Lost Park. The hunting expedition proves successful with an additional three bucks bagged, photos showing the dressing out of the bucks, drying of the venison strung along lines next to the tent, strings of trout caught from Trapper Lake, eating trout for dinner, and trout fishing. In addition, photos include such images as downtown Meeker, with street scene showing the Western town false store fronts of the Rio Blanco County Seat, the Historic Browns Palace Hotel in Denver, several photos of the city park in Denver, including marble statues of Native Americans on horseback, elk, cow moose, and buffalo wandering the park, the Victorian entrance gate, and more. There are many images of assorted camps, the hunting party eating around the portable stove, the wagon team & horses, Hiram their "Mascot" peeling potatoes and wearing an ammunition belt and bandanna, making venison soup, and even a photo of one of them sewing up his only pair of trousers far from home. Harman (fl. 1880-1930s) according to the laid -in manuscript note about the album lived in San Marino and Pasadena working as a newspaper man for the LA Evening Herald and the Los Angeles Times, his son Francis Harman Jr. became a political cartoonist from by the 1920s in several Southern California newspapers, and the third son named Eaton Harmon eventually possessed these photos, along with those of Southern California, Utah, Colorado, and Oklahoma shot from 1890 through the 1920s.
Original Buechner Manufacturing Co. black cloth Snap Shot Album, w/ patent date stamp of March 24, 1896, lettering in blind embossed on front cover, manuscript title in pencil on front pastedown. Minor wear, overall in vg cond.
