SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Division of State History has made publicly available a new collection of rare photographs of southern Utah from 1890 to 1912.
Largely taken by Charles Goodman, a photographer in Bluff, the images document mining ventures, landscapes, city streets and residences. The photos, donated to the state in 1997 by Afton Watkins Gardner, were passed down from friends of Goodman.
“We are grateful to the San Juan County Historical Commission for its help in discovering the historic value of this collection and in identifying these images,” Heidi Tak, the project manager, said in a statement
“By partnering with the historical commission and senior citizens around Bluff, we were able to identify many of the details of these significant photos,” Brad Westwood, director of the Utah Division of State History, said in the statement. “We hope to explore similar citizen-led efforts in the future.”
More than 250,000 photographs are now available through the division’s digital collections. Funding has been provided by the Department of Heritage and Arts digitization fund, which was created by the Legislature in 2007.
The images include hundreds of photos digitally preserved from extremely fragile glass plates or nitrate negatives that would otherwise no be seen publicly.
To view the photographs from Afton Waktins Gardner Collection, as well as thousands of other images, visit history.utah.gov/library-collections-history.