Yellowstone and Rocky Mountain Parks photograph collection, 1920-1930

The Yellowstone and Rocky Mountain Parks Photograph Collection consists of one photograph album of prints of Yellowstone and Rocky Mountain National Parks in the 1920s compiled by an unknown individual. The majority of the prints were commercially produced by the official photographers of their respective parks: Frank Jay (F.Jay) Haynes and his son Jack Ellis Haynes of Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming; and Fred Payne (F.P.) Clatworthy of Estes Park, Colorado. The album is relevant to the history of promotion and tourism in the national parks of the American West.

Yellowstone Park became the United States’ first national park in 1872. In 1881, F. Jay Haynes, a Minnesota photographer working as official photographer for the Northern Pacific Railway, first visited Yellowstone. Several years later, in 1884 and 1897, Haynes leased land from the park to build stores to sell his photography commercially. Haynes and his son published guide books to Yellowstone annually until 1966. After Haynes’ death, his son Jack Ellis Haynes expanded the family’s stores, adding photo finishing services, photography supplies, and other retail items, as well as dormitories for employees. The Haynes family sold the business in 1968, and in 1999, the National Park Service purchased the buildings. (Ref: “Haynes Photo Shops,” National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/historyculture/haynesphotoshops.htm).

Rocky Mountain National Park was established in 1915. The majority of the prints collected in the album were produced by Fred Payne (F.P.) Clatworthy, a photographer and major promoter of the park and the nearby town Estes Park, of which he was the second mayor. Clatworthy opened his business, Ye Lyttle Shop, in 1905, which sold not only photographs, but also served as a curio shop and general store. Clatworthy was a pioneer of autochromes, an early form of color photography, and licensed autochromes of various parks in the American West to railroad companies, as well as to the National Geographic Magazine. In 1917, Clatworthy presented his work before the United States Congress as part of a successful lobby to expand the area of Rocky Mountain National Park. (Ref: Adrienne Evans, “Introducing the Fred Payne Clatworthy Collection,” History Colorado, February 27, 2017, https://www.historycolorado.org/story/collections-library/2017/02/27/introducing-fred-payne-clatworthy-collection).