Archives West Finding Aid

Bob and Ira Spring were twins born in Olympia, Washington on December 24, 1918 to Elliot Beebe Spring, an accountant, and Allena Loomis Spring, a teacher. The Spring children, while growing up in Olympia and Shelton, Washington, engaged in outdoor activities with their parents from a young age. In 1929 their father took them on their first overnight trip to High Divide in the Olympic Mountains and they both became passionate about hiking and mountains. The twins acquired their first cameras in 1930 through the Kodak Camera Company's 50th anniversary promotional giveaway of a camera and a roll of film to any child twelve years old that year (born in 1918). They roamed the trails exploring and taking photographs. Ira worked summers of 1937-1941 for the Rainier National Park Company in the Paradise Inn and managing the photo shop.

During World War II, Bob served in Africa, Italy and Germany with an army field hospital as an x-ray technician. He took personal photographs of occupied and liberated Europe. Some of these photographs were later donated to the Holocaust Museum in Melbourne, Australia. Ira served in the South Pacific as a ground photographer with the Army Air Corps, taking photographs from open bomb bays with crew members holding on to his legs.

After their discharge from the army at the end of World War II, Bob and Ira Spring set up a photography business in Seattle. The Seattle Times commissioned photographic spreads from the brothers for the Sunday edition rotogravure section. Their first assignment was to photograph the Mountaineers 1946 summer outing hiking the Wonderland Trail around Mt. Rainier. In the 1950s, the Springs began to publish travel books featuring their photography of climbing and exploration of the Pacific Northwest. By 1967, the brothers decided to take on separate freelance jobs, but they continued to use the Bob and Ira Spring credit line for their solo works. Bob and his wife Norma concentrated their work on Alaska, producing several books on the people, wildlife, and the land. Members of the Society of American Travel Writers, they spoke and wrote about international travel as a means of promoting understanding and peaceful relationships between countries. They worked with Alaska Airlines to develop charter flights to the USSR during the Cold War. A significant part of Ira's career was his photography for the Mountaineers publications, which included the famous "100 Hikes" series guidebooks for particular regions in the Pacific Northwest. The books were very popular and even led to some overcrowding on the trails featured in the books after publication. Ira was an activist for protecting trails and access to the wilderness and became a founding member of the Washington Trails Association. He also served on the board of the Mountaineers and REI. Bob and Ira were three-time recipients of the Governor's Literary Award and in 1992 Ira received the Teddy Roosevelt Conservation Award for his work in trails and conservation.

Best known for their photographs, Bob and Ira also made films. These covered such diverse subjects as promotion of tourism in Washington State, advertising, climbing in the Cascades, instructional films on climbing and mountain rescue made for The Mountaineers, and home movies of Ira's family and his trip back to the South Pacific in the late 1950's.