[Annotated Vernacular Photograph Album of Western Travel, Including Trips to Yellowstone, British Columbia, and California]

[Various locations], 1940. Very good plus.. Forty leaves, illustrated with 251 black-and-white photographs, measuring between 2.75 x 2 inches and 5.75 x 3.5 inches, artfully arranged in mounting corners, most leaves with at least one annotation in white ink. Oblong quarto. Contemporary black textured leather photograph album, string tied. Bookplate of Ruth Richardson on first page. Mild edge wear, a few marks on covers. A couple of photographs loose, but all in excellent shape. A wide-ranging photographic record encapsulating the western travels and early family life of an active young woman named Ruth Richardson in the years during and after the Great Depression. The album opens with several pictures of the Hollywood area in 1932, including Rudolph Valentino's house, Grauman's Chinese Theatre, and the Brown Derby. Richardson also attended the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles and took several shots inside the Coliseum during the event. She also visited friends in San Francisco.

The album then includes several shots of Ruth and friends on a "West Coast Vancouver Island Trip" in 1933. Ruth was apparently very interested in the indigenous peoples on Vancouver Island, as she includes here pictures of an "Indian Band," "Indian Children," and an "Indian Graveyard." She also visits her friends around Indianola, Washington, with shots taken at Rosario and Copalis beaches. The scene then shifts to the next year with Ruth still in Washington. Ruth takes several pictures during the Wenatchee Blossom Festival Parade, goes to the woods with friends at Ingalls Creek, rides bicycles with her friend Betty Weiss, spends time at Lake Chelan and Soap Lake, and revisits Rosario Beach.

Ruth then records her honeymoon at Yellowstone Park in the next thirty-or-so photographs. These begin with her and her groom's drive up Lookout Pass, then through the entrance to the park at Gardiner and up to the Old Faithful Lodge. Ruth takes three pictures of a bear, and documents for herself many notable locations within the park, such as Mammoth Hot Springs, Morning Glory, Cone Geyser, Old Faithful, Jupiter Terrace, and Grand Canyon.

During the remainder of the album, Ruth memorializes her time at "Auto Camp" in Gardiner, Montana; her first family home at Wenatchee; Easter and the Fourth of July in 1936; their apartment in Seattle; their apartment and various scenery around Colville, Washington; camping at Pend Oreille Lake in Idaho; fishing at Black Lake; picnicking at Kettle Falls, and visiting Lake Christina in British Columbia, Twin Lakes, and Swift Current Lake among other western locations in the remaining years of the 1930s. The album concludes with a shot of Ruth and her friends simply captioned, "1941."

A wonderful collection of vernacular photographs shot and documented by an energetic woman traveling up and down the American West Coast before, during, and after she married and began a family in the 1930s.