Between the Covers

Softcover. Thick oblong small octavo. String-tied black card wrappers with printed illustration and with "Photographs Souvenir of The Black Hills" printed in gold on the top board. Chipping on the boards, and with chips at the extremities of the blank black pages, good only; the images are very good or better, a few with small nicks or wear. The large majority are captioned in ink, usually in the top margin of the image. 142 mostly glossy black and white gelatin silver photographs, most measuring about 2.75" x 4.5". The album documents life at "The Gumbo Ranch" owned by Victor Carroll, which was located near Bear Butte, South Dakota, as well as some surrounding scenes in Wyoming, and a few in Nebraska and Chicago. Most of the photos are of a working ranch and nearby towns, with many of surrounding towns, Sturgis, Paxton, Leads, Savoy, Deadwood, and other Black Hills and Badlands locations. The photographs tell a lively story that include many taken on the ranch (buildings, many of working ranch hands and cowboys, livestock, equipment, threshing, road building, etc.), interesting images of a cyclone or tornado, the Deadwood Rodeo, a gold mine at Leads, a grasshopper swarm and its resulting devastation, scenery (Devil's Tower, The Needles, Bear Butte, Mt. Rushmore under construction, buffalo herds), nearby facilities (Hotel at Lake Adams, the Tea Room at Mt. Coolidge, the Post Office in Savoy, St. Wenceslaus Church in Tabor, etc.), and more. Despite the touristic nature of the album cover, this seems less touristic than it is the documentation of an actual working ranch. A nice album. While tourist albums of the Black Hills area turn up, albums of daily life in the area are much less common.

Item #402268