U.S. West: Photographs, Manuscripts, and Imprints, DeGolyer Library
About the Collection
Overview
U.S. West: Photographs, Manuscripts, and Imprints digital collection provides a sample of the photographs, images, albums, and more, relating to the U.S. West held by SMU's DeGolyer Library.
DeGolyer Library digital collections are part of CUL Digital Collections, which contain thousands of digitized photographs, manuscripts, imprints, and works of art held by SMU's Central University Libraries special collections.
View an online book containing samples of the collection.
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 500,000 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
- Album of views of Arizona, New Mexico and the southwest, 1892 (William Henry Jackson photographs)
- Arizona and California, album by A. A. Forbes
- Collection of California and Colorado photographs
- Collection of Carleton E. Watkins western stereoscopic views
- Collection of cowboy postcards
- Collection of cowgirl postcards
- 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
- Explorations in Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico and the Colorado River by Timothy O’ Sullivan
- F. Jay Haynes photographs of Yellowstone National Park
- 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
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Landscape photographs of Yosemite, California by Eadweard Muybridge - Lantern slides of Mexico, California and Colorado by William Henry Jackson
- Les geysers d'Amerique by William Henry Jackson
- On the Kansas Pacific Railway by Robert Benecke
- Partridge's Alaska photographs
- Photographs of Colorado and New Mexico by D. B. Chase and others
- Photographs of Weber Canon and Echo City, Utah by Carleton E. Watkins
- Professor Sedgwick's illuminated lectures "across the continent"
- 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
- Union Pacific Railroad Illustrations
- Views of Colorado, New Mexico and Mexico
- Western expedition, railroad and survey stereographs
- Wiley Oil Wells, California photographs
- 101 Ranch and Burroum Ranch, Del Rio, Texas
Digital Collections Guidelines and Procedures
Related Collections
U.S. West: Photographs, Manuscripts, and Imprints is one of a family of digital collections from the DeGolyer Library that focuses on Texas, the U.S. West, Mexico, and Latin America.
For more information, see:
Items in Central University Library Digital Collections are digitized following the SMU Central University Libraries Digitization Guidelines and Procedures. Digital collections are created under the guidelines of the SMU CONTENTdm Guide: Framework for Building a Collection, or through specialized metadata profiles tailored for the collection.
Usage
Copyright usage terms vary throughout the collection. Each item contains information about usage terms. If SMU does not have the right to publish the item on the Internet, only the item's metadata will be available and the digitized object will be available on a restricted access basis. Such items may only be viewed on campus. When items are available for use, please cite DeGolyer Library, Central University Libraries, Southern Methodist University. A high-quality version of these files may be obtained for a fee by contacting degolyer@smu.edu.
Contact Info
For more information about the collection, please contact degolyer@smu.edu.
