1940–1950s Photo Album of a West Texas Family on the Ranch and around the Country.
United States: Richard’s and others, 1940s–1960. Album measuring 10 ¼ x 13 inches containing approximately 260 photos; photos generally 3 ½ x 5 ¼ and smaller, with several larger colorized photos. Also includes program from the 1946 Texas Woman’s Missionary Union Conference, postcard of the Texas Confederate Museum in Austin, and printed poem. Items glued in, some with manuscript captions. Album and contents overall excellent, with a few photos missing. Item #List3640
A photo album belonging to a family in the El Paso area from the 1940s and 1950s, with the latest photo dated to 1960. The album documents rural household life, schooling, and a family trip across the country from Massachusetts to California.
The album is highlighted by its shots of rugged ranch life in the Southwest. A photo captioned “The Prospector” shows an older man in a boilersuit holding a gold pan outside a tent, with a backdrop of prickly pears and yucca. Men in work clothes stand in front of barbed wire fences with posts made of unprocessed logs; ride horses around flat scrubland, sometimes with their children on board; milk cows; and stand outside their trucks (cars and trucks are frequent subjects in the album). Children ride horses; young boys dress up with cowboy hats and feathered headdresses, and young girls—but not their elders—wear blue jeans. Houses are small, single-story, and often surrounded by barbed wire; in contrast with these, however, is a series of shots of several different suburban homes with grassy yards, porches, and picket fences.
Not all the rural homestead shots are from Texas, as some include Saguaro cacti, which do not grow in Texas but further west in the Sonoran Desert. These photos, likely from Arizona, include several of a woman and child standing next to a gigantic saguaro specimen, as well as low, flat houses fenced in with wire fences, and miles of scrubland with mountains rising in the background.
Other subjects include a high school graduation and a cross-country trip, with identifiable locations including Plymouth and Boston, Massachusetts, and Catalina Island and Knott’s Berry Farm in California. School photos of students and teachers from Sierra Blanca from the 1951–52 school year make up the end of the album, and early photos include formal portraits from Richard’s, a photography studio in El Paso, and include several of a man in US Navy uniform. One unusual series is a photo shoot of a young woman and her Underwood typewriter, set up with her books and glasses on a folding table in the driveway.
Of interest for its depiction of postwar life and ranching in the rural Southwest.
Price: $600.00