U.S. West: Photographs, Manuscripts, and Imprints

About the Collection

Holding library: DeGolyer Library

View more collections held by DeGolyer Library

Collection Materials

In general, collecting at the DeGolyer Library emphasizes the American West, the borderlands, exploration, business history and transportation, particularly the railroads. The DeGolyer houses extensive photographic collections totaling over 1 million images. Included are photographs by such important Western landscape photographers as Carleton Watkins, Andrew Russell, Alexander Gardner, William Henry Jackson, John Hillers, Charles Roscoe Savage, F. Jay Haynes, Edward Curtis, Robert Benecke and Laura Gilpin. The DeGolyer has several rare Western accessions, including Alexander Gardner’s 1867 portfolio, Across the Continent on the Kansas Pacific Railroad (Route of the 35th Parallel), which is one of only four known copies of this early, significant western landscape project.

In the DeGolyer collections, there are also examples of early photographic processes and formats covering the history of photography such as daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, stereographs, cartes de visite, photographically illustrated books, real photographic postcards, and albumen and gelatin silver prints from ca. 1846 to 1960s.

Holdings and Highlights

In the U.S. West: Photographs, Manuscripts, and Imprints digital collection, the DeGolyer Library is making available all or part of a growing number of its accessions:

• Across the Continent on the Kansas Pacific Railroad (Route of the 35th Parallel) by Alexander Gardner
• Alaska, photographs from the Gold Rush of the late 1890s
• Alaska: Mayo & Weed photograph album, showing Alaska, as well as Colorado, Utah, and British Columbia
  
• Alexander Gardner cartes de visite and portraits
• Album of views of Arizona, New Mexico and the southwest, 1892 (William Henry Jackson photographs)
• Arizona and California, album by A. A. Forbes
• Carleton E. Watkins photographs, ca. 1869-1885
• Central Pacific Railroad Stereographs, ca. 1867-1869
• Collection of American Indian Postcards
• Collection of California and Colorado photographs
• Collection of Carleton E. Watkins western stereoscopic views
• Collection of cowboy postcards
• Collection of cowgirl postcards
• Collection of photographs of Indians and the west
• Collection of western prints by John M. Stanley
• Colorado by William Henry Jackson
• Colorado Exploring Expedition lithographs ca. 1860
• Costilla Estates Development Company, San Luis, Colorado Photographs, April, 1909
• C.R. Savage photographs
• Early Aviation and Northrop Aircraft Corporation Albums
• Explorations in Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico and the Colorado River by Timothy O’ Sullivan
• F. Jay Haynes photographs of Yellowstone National Park, including Broad panel views, Yellowstone Park; Portfolio, marbled cover; Portfolio, brown cover; and Album, tan cover
• Gems of California Scenery
• Indians
• Indians of the Oklahoma Territory
• Huntley irrigation project, Montana
• Hunting journal, 1877, by Algernon Heber Percy and his wife

• John K. Hillers photographs of Indian pueblos
• Journey through the Yellowstone National Park and Northwestern Wyoming, 1883.
• Landscape photographs of Yosemite, California by Eadweard Muybridge
• Lantern Slides of Indians, ca. 1900-1920
• Lantern slides of Mexico, California and Colorado by William Henry Jackson
• Les geysers d'Amerique by William Henry Jackson
• Martin Garretson Prints of Buffalo Hunting, 1914, four lithographs by Martin S. Garretson that depict the decline of the Buffalo population due to hunting in the 1860s-1880s
• Missouri River ferries
• Mountain Charley, or the Adventures of Mrs. E. J. Guerin, Who Was Thirteen Years in Male Attire. An Autobiography Comprising a Period of Thirteen Years Life in the States, California, and Pike's Peak, 1861, by Elsa Jane Guerin
• On the Kansas Pacific Railway by Robert Benecke
• Our Denver Story, 1863, including albums, photographs, correspondence, drawings, and ephemera documenting Jane Whiteley's trip to Denver by stage coach in 1863.
• Pacific Coast Scenery, 1872, by Houseworth and Co.
• Panorama of San Francisco from California St. Hill, 1877, by Eadweard Muybridge
• Partridge's Alaska photographs
• Photographs of Colorado and New Mexico by D. B. Chase and others
• Photographs of the Yellowstone National Park and views in Montana and Wyoming territories, by William Henry Jackson
• Photographs of Weber Canon and Echo City, Utah by Carleton E. Watkins
• Professor Sedgwick's illuminated lectures "across the continent"
• Ridge Family Papers, including John Ridge's 1835 journal while he was a Cherokee Nation delegate to Washington D.C. when the Cherokee Nation was in the process of ceding all Cherokee lands east of the Mississippi.
• San Francisco album: photographs of the most beautiful views and public buildings of San Francisco, 1856, by G.R. Fardon.
• San Francisco Earthquake, 1906
• Stereographs of the Dakota Territory
• Stereographs of the U.S. West and Midwest
• The Great Union Pacific Railroad, Excursion to the Hundredth Meridian: From New York to Platte City, 1867, published by The Republican Company.
• Topham Family Letters, Folder 1. Simon Thornton Topham, a polygamist, wrote these letters to his second wife, Mary "Lucinda" Robinson Topham, during the years 1887-1908
• 139 items from the Tourist album: Mexico, Arizona, California, Colorado and Utah, which contains 287 photographs; 152 items are in the Mexico: Photographs, Manuscripts, and Imprints collection
• Tulsa Race Riot, 11 real photographic postcards showing the racially-based violence that took place in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma on May 31 and June 1, 1921. Pictures illustrate the devastation to the African American community, including whole blocks burned to the ground, bodies of victims and the convention hall.
• Union Pacific Railroad, ca. 1880-1925
• Union Pacific Railroad Illustrations, 1869, and Union Pacific Railroad. Photographical Illustrations. (also known as The Great West illustrated in a series of photographic views across the Continent taken along the line of the Union Pacific Railroad ...), 1869, by Andrew Russell.
• United States Army 1st Cavalry records, 1829-1840
• Utah and Wyoming, 1868-1870, by Andrew J. Russell
• Views of Colorado, New Mexico and Mexico, ca. 1880s-1890s
• Views of New Almaden, ca. 1885-1895, by Robert R. Bulmore and S.W. Winn
• Western expedition, railroad and survey stereographs, included is the Union Pacific Rail Road, Excursion to the 100th Meridian, October 1866
• Wiley Oil Wells, California photographs
• 101 Ranch and Burroum Ranch, Del Rio, Texas