Automobile Travel Photograph Album -- Women

UNKNOWN

Publication: Privately photographed and captioned, 1912-1923, Portland, Oregon

14 1/4" x 9" Contemporary textured & grained faux calf binding with rounded corners, a National Publishing Co., Philadelphia PA label on rear pastedown sheet. Oblong quarto. 94 pages (unpaginated) on thick black paper stock with 427 silver gelatin mounted photographs, nearly all have been captioned and identified in ink and nearly all are dated. The photographs range in size from 2.1/2" x 4" up to 12 1/2" x 4."

An unusually good photo album overflowing with 427 silver gelatin photographs, chronicling the driving, auto camping, hunting, fishing, and travel adventures of an unidentified Portland area woman driver. She traveled across the Pacific Coast from Washington to Mexico, as well as across the country to Michigan and Illinois during the Brass Era of automobiles, and just after World War I.

An incredibly well-executed photograph album meticulously documenting the adventuresome automobile trips, auto camping sojourns, hunting & fishing trips, and transcontinental treks of this unfortunately unidentified Portland-area woman, and apparently Meier & Frank Department Store department manager. The earliest series of photographs strewn through the album at various spots are 1912, featuring drives to Clear Creek, Oregon, followed by many in 1913, including the Meier & Frank Bonneville Picnic, Store baseball team games, potato races, exterior shots of Meier & Frank Building, as well as early drives to Scappoose Creek, and the Meier & Frank Picnic to Estacada, Oregon in 1916. Featured as well are early Portland Automobile Club drives who were proponents of the Good Roads Movement in the Pacific Northwest, and until 1914 under the direction of E. Henry Wemme. Featured are photographs of the Portland Automobile Club grounds built in 1912-1913, with a club house designed by Doyle, Patterson, and Beach in the rustic Cascadian Style of the Columbia River area, just prior to the opening of the historic Columbia River Highway. Another series shows the Auto Club forming up at the Meier & Frank warehouse in 1914 for the drive to the newly purchased and named Menucha Retreat created by Julius Meier in 1914, with a long line of Brass Era automobiles, and shots of the members brush clearing, and roadbuilding to the Menucha Estate, also designed by A. E. Doyle of Doyle, Patterson & Beach with giant rustic timbers in an Adirondack Rustic style (destroyed by carpenter ants in the early 1920's).

The album depicts our indomitable woman traveling to Parkdale, Oregon, the Fish Hatchery in Bonneville, camping on Mt. Hood, hunting & fishing near the Zig Zag bridge on the way to Mt. Hood, the 12 mile House, visits to Oregon City Falls, out the Powell Valley Road to Gresham, fishing at Seaview, Oregon, along with extended camping, fishing, and beach trips to Ilwaco, and the Long Beach Peninsula. One sequence shows her and her compatriots using horse-drawn seiner nets to bring in salmon at Long Beach, as well as a whole series devoted to a Life Saving Drill in 1913, as well as ocean swimming, and napping on the beach. The album also shows her many automobile treks to California, including visits and camping on the summit of Mt. Wilson, extended trip to Northern California, and the Panama-Pacific International Exposition.

Covers lightly scuffed at the extremities and corners, but still a sturdy album in very good condition.