Yellowstone Dude Ranch Photo Album - 1916

YELLOWSTONE DUDE RANCH PHOTO ALBUM –  1916

Yellowstone Dude Ranch Photo Album. Wyoming and Montana: [1916]. [96]pp. Side sewn brown cloth covers with 'Photographs' gilt stamped on the front board. Album contains 151 black and white photographs of varying sizes, mounted to rectos and versos with 76 of the photos being identified.

A photo album documenting a dude ranch experience near Yellowstone in 1916 compiled by a John, Horace, and Carl Reed, presumably brothers, presumably of Chicago, and presented to a group of guides named Pete, Johnnie, Art, Doc, Fred, and George. We have credible identification of 'Pete' as a Peter Nordquist (b.1880) in the form of a laid-in note from the previous owner. Numerous ancestral records place him in the dude ranch industry, including census records from 1930 and 1940, and his 1918 WWI draft card notes his occupation as a 'guide' for 'Joe Jones' of Cody, a prominent early dude ranch operator and outfitter active in the areas identified to the album pages. Several views capture the environs of a single, modest ranch, possibly Jones', though a precise identification of 'base' is not clear. Those locations soundly identified include Fire Creek, Cooke City, Shoshone Lake, The Cody Road, Cooke City Store, etc. This album provides a most excellent primary glimpse into the then fledgling dude ranch scene around Yellowstone in 1916.