Between the Covers

Hardcover. Folio. Measuring 8½" x 15". Quarter leather and black cloth with gilt decorations. Contains 250 sepia-toned albumen photographs measuring between ½” x ½” and 7½" x 9½", with captions. Very good album with worn edges, rubbing, and some removed pages with very good or better photographs with some fading.

A photo album compiled by Eugenia Atkinson of Ashland, Oregon beginning in 1889. The photographs featured here are views of Oregon, California, Missouri, and Hawaii and do not appear to be in chronological order. Atkinson annotates the photos and includes handwritten captions throughout the album. She begins with images of her hometown with views of Ashland Creek Falls, Crater Lakes, and a local mill. Atkinson captured daily life in Oregon with images of picnics by the creek, interior home scenes, and fashionably dressed women posed for a group photo. Atkinson and her friends and family visit Honolulu, Hawaii and she includes large format photos of the hotel where they stayed, landscapes, and local people. Another section of images depicts a trip to Missouri with images of a farm and friends' homes. Atkinson visits the coasts of California and Oregon photographing lifeguards practicing drills, the Cliff House in San Francisco, Newport Beach, and Victorian beachgoers lying in the sand. Other photos show interiors of well-to-do homes, portraits of friends, family pets, and a trip to Stanford. Towards the end of the album a train crash near Ashland is seen; another photo shows an arch constructed for a visit by President Roosevelt.

Eugenia was the wife of English-born businessman W.H. Atkinson. According to the National Park Service, after arriving in Oregon in 1874, Atkinson became “active in the town's principal industrial and banking enterprises,” owning shares in the Ashland Flour Mill and the Ashland Woolen Manufacturing Company. He was one of the founders of the Bank of Ashland and helped organize the Ashland Library. Mr. Atkinson died relatively young, at the age of 50 in 1894, and Eugenia spent the next 24 years in the house they had built in Ashland, now on the National Registry of Historic Places. A photo dated 1889 shows Eugenia standing in front of her house. This album follows Eugenia during her widowhood during her travels and her activities within the community.

A nice collection of photographs compiled by an important Oregon woman at the turn of the century.

Item #469579