Archives West Finding Aid

The Sweet Pea Carnival was established by the Bozeman Commercial Club (now the Bozeman Chamber of Commerce) in 1906 to attract a sugar beet processing plant to the city of Bozeman. The Commercial Club chose the sweet pea as the focus of the carnival after seeing the flowers growing abundantly around the community. Although the sugar beet plant eventually chose Billings as its location, Bozeman continued to host the carnival until World War I. It was revived in 1978 as the Sweet Pea Festival of the Arts, an annual three-day event celebrating local music, theater, dance, and visual arts.

Albert and Alfred Schlechten, whose photographs of the 1907 Sweet Pea Carnival are included in the album, were prominent photographers in the town of Bozeman. They ran the Schlechten Brothers photography studio in Bozeman from 1900-1910. Albert Schlechten (1876-1962), the eldest brother specialized in landscape photography, while Alfred Schlechten (1877-1970) was more skilled as a portrait photographer. Although their photographs were often credited simply as "Schlechten," the type of scene depicted in their work serves as a useful indicator of which brother took the photo.

Louise (Huppie) Bratvold (1910-1989), who owned the photo album, was born in Lewistown, Montana in 1910. She married William F. Gregory in 1927 and the couple had one daughter. The marriage ended in divorce, and she married J.R. Johns of Lewistown in 1929. That marriage ended as well, and she married Oscar Marcus Bratvold in 1932. Although her marriage to Oscar Bratvold lasted less than a year, she retained the last name Bratvold until she married Boles Sinkovitz in 1948. She ran a cafe called Louise's Cafe in Bozeman and later moved to California. Louise Sinkovitz died in Anaheim, California in 1989.