Mining for Photographic Gold at the Denver Public Library

By Chris Lombardi, 6-20-07

I feel like a prospector returning from his claim with a handful of choice nuggets. I’ll let you assay the ore....

A weary Mormon family sits in front of their Conestoga wagons

Portrait of Obtosoway, a Native American Ojibwa chief

Benjamin J. Hodges - flamboyant frontier character, cowboy, outlaw, lawman, gambler

Theodore Roosevelt rides down 17th Street, Denver

Colorado National Guardsman toss a soldier in the air during a Miners strike

Portrait of an Hopi man, smoking

Funeral portrait of a girl (Warning: potentially disturbing.)

Steve Young, hanged at Laramie by vigilantes, 1868 (Also potentially disturbing.)

Portrait of an unidentified female criminal, ca. 1900

Cell blocks after riot at the State Penitentiary in Canon City, Colorado, 1929

These are just a few of the gems I discovered this week in the photo archives of the Denver Public Library. By some mysterious act of search engine, I found myself lost in the 120,000 images of the Western US that have been digitized by the library. It was several hours later before I came up for air.

If you have an interest in historical images, the resources on the Web are vast, although scattered, and the access interfaces for most sites are pretty crude. The National Archives have several hand-selected and easily browsed collections related to the West. Check out the Photographs of the American West collection. They also have all of the images from Ansel Adams National Parks project, although many of the digital scans are surprisingly bad.

And if you really get hooked by the historical image bug, you’ve got to check out Shorpy: The 100-Year-Old Photo Blog, a site where collectors of vintage photographs share their latest finds. You’ll find something interesting here nearly every day.