Collections : [University of Michigan William L. Clements Library]

The California and Western Tour photograph album contains commercial and amateur photographs of scenes in Yosemite National Park, Yellowstone National Park, California, New Mexico, and other locales. The volume includes a group of photographs taken at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois, in 1893.

This album (23cm x 30cm) contains 67 commercial and amateur prints of scenes in various locales, particularly in the western United States. The album is bound in red pebbled leather with small gold trim. Many of the photographs are commercial prints as large as 19cm x 24cm, with captions and negative numbers. Manuscript captions accompany some of the items, often with information about the size of natural features shown. Pictures of rock formations, waterfalls, rivers and lakes, and geysers are most common, along with shots of architectural landmarks and groups of tourists. Prominent photograph locations include Yosemite National Park (9 items), Garden of the Gods (4 items), New Mexico (3 items), the Columbia River (3 items), and Yellowstone National Park (20 items). The album has 2 pictures of Niagara Falls, one of which was taken in winter.

Though the album focuses on natural scenery, several photographs show various types of buildings, such as missions in California and New Mexico, hotels in California, the Lick observatory, a group of buildings at the Shasta Springs retreat, a railroad dining car interior, and the exterior of a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco, California. Scenes of horse-drawn carriages fording the Fire Hole River in Yellowstone National Park and passing through a tunnel cut into the trunk of a large tree in Yosemite National Park are present, as are other group photographs. One shows "Miss E. P. Gould" riding a horse, and another shows a group of men fishing on Yellowstone Lake. An 1888 portrait of John C. Frémont, his wife Jessie, and their daughter shows them standing in front of the "Fremont tree" in Redwood Grove. A final group of photographs consists of pictures of various buildings constructed for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois.

The "Western Trip" photograph album contains pictures of people, natural scenery, and cities in Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, California, Oregon, and Washington. The album includes photographs of the traveling party, popular tourist destinations, and residents of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

This album (17cm x 25cm), entitled "Western Trip-Summer-1899," contains 95 photographs of people and scenery in several western states. Each page contains two photographs housed in 8cm x 8cm windows; all items have captions, usually providing the location of the photograph. The title "Photographs" is printed in gold on the album's faded green cloth cover.

The photographer took three photographs of railroad stations, railroad tracks, and the prairie in Nebraska and Kansas before reaching Colorado. A photograph on the first page, identified as Lincoln, Nebraska, is likely mislabeled. A manuscript caption on the back of this photograph identifies the location as Omaha, Nebraska. In Colorado, where the photographer visited Manitou Springs, several canyons, Pikes Peak, and the Garden of the Gods. Several photographs are views of mountain passes and similar Colorado scenery some of which were taken from the front of a horse drawn carriage. The photographs from New Mexico include street-level views of Las Vegas and Santa Fe, as well as informal portraits of a woman and a child in front of a pueblo, a woman ("Belle of Santa Fe"), and a boy ("Dude of Santa Fe"). In Arizona, the traveler visited cliff dwellings, canyons, and the Grand Canyon; some images show the horse-drawn carriage the party took from Flagstaff to the Grand Canyon, and others show tourists (including the compiler) on horses. The caption of one photograph implies that a railroad car on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway had caught fire, though no fire or smoke is apparent.

After visiting the Southwest, the traveler continued to California, where he or she collected several photographs of the Pacific Ocean as seen from Santa Catalina Island, California. These are followed by a group of pictures from Yosemite National Park, including views of mountains, waterfalls, lakes, and forests, and a picture of Mount Shasta. The final items feature the Hotel Portland in Portland, Oregon; Umatilla House in The Dalles, Oregon ("Where Measles Flourish"); the Columbia River and riverside scenery; Tacoma, Washington; Seattle, Washington; and the shore of Lake Washington.