The Shaw & Powell Camping Company had been operating in Yellowstone since 1893,[1] offering week-long tours by horse and coach and basic lodging in temporary camps. Forsyth would write about his first summer in Yellowstone for a student journal published in Lincoln the following spring. His essay documents visitors’ contrasting reactions to the park’s wonders. Initially it is lyrical and evocative, perhaps drawing on his own epiphany on seeing Yellowstone for the first time:
“They are thinking of Him who during untold ages has been preparing all these beauties. A spirit of worship such as they have never known before is upon them.”[2]
But the main body of the article is rather less transcendent – instead it is a comic swipe at “a man from Michigan” who was left unimpressed by the park; it exhibits an endearingly dry and understated sense of humor, and is worth quoting at length as it offers a unique glimpse into Forsyth’s personality:
“I was busy at work in the barn that morning when the train pulled in. Suddenly I heard a very business like voice behind me. I looked about and there stood a short, stout, freckle-faced fellow with long red hair. ‘Smart is my name,’ said he extending his plump freckled hand. ‘I’m a law student from Ann Arbor’ … He saw by my manner that I did not recognize his importance as much as he had wished …
“After we were fairly started on our long tour of the Park, he began to inform me of the exalted place he occupied in the estimation of those who knew his ability. Going thru the Gardiner Canon [sic] I tried hard to draw his attention to the pretty cascades admired so much by all tourists. He cast a side glance at them and went on telling what Congressman So & So, ‘a warm personal friend’ of his, had once said. We approached Eagle Nest Rock and I tried to call his attention to the young eagles perched on its summit. But he did not ‘care much for such things.’ We passed the lovely hot spring terraces but he barely looked at them. I had not yet recognized his greatness and so he was telling how his political friends had begged and plead with him to accept the nomination for a state office. Silver Gate and Golden Gate were passed with hardly a comment. I soon gave up trying to show him anything.”[3]
That fall saw Forsyth living in Butte on a semi-permanent basis. The 1902 city directory lists him as a travel agent living at 5½ West Agate Street.[4] A notice in the Lincoln Evening News from April 1902 offers a little more detail:
“N.A. Forsyth, who is well known to University Place people, is visiting friends in town. Mr. Forsyth came directly from Butte, Montana, where he has been soliciting for a Yellowstone Park tourist company. He says he sells a few stereoscopic views on the side.”[5]
Forsyth would largely continue this pattern for the next five years,[6] spending his summers working in Yellowstone and the rest of the year based in Butte, canvassing for both Shaw & Powell and Underwood & Underwood, while also producing his own stereographs. However, he does not appear in the 1903 Butte directory. According to Wilber G. Squires, Forsyth took a postgraduate course at the University of Chicago at this time.[7]
Forsyth was back in Butte on May 27th, 1903, when President Roosevelt visited the city. “President Roosevelt at Finlen Hotel, Butte, Mont.”[8] is another rare Forsyth stereograph that can be dated exactly, as is “Crowds of Butte Miners at the Court House, October 20, 1903, after the Shut Down”, although in this instance Forsyth himself has the date wrong.[9] It is in fact an extremely rare image of F. Augustus Heinze delivering his famous speech from the Silver Bow Court House steps on October 26th, 1903.[10]
After a third summer working at Yellowstone, Forsyth would make Butte his official home from 1903 to 1917. The 1904 city directory lists him as a photographer for the first time, living at 1105 West Granite Street,[11] though he continued to use a Livingston address on the Yellowstone views he sold to the summer tourists.
By 1905 the stereographic business was changing, focusing increasingly on collections designed for schools and libraries. Forsyth followed suit: “I made up a 200 set of views that I called my school set to sell to schools and teachers.”[12] These sets were among his first to be published on gray mounts, which account for most of those in circulation today. A number of them are stamped on the reverse with his West Granite Street address, which dates them 1905 or earlier. In 1906 he moved to an apartment in The Concord Block at 120 North Montana Street, which would serve as his home and studio until 1917.[13] He formed a close friendship with the Concord’s landlady Louisa Plint, and employed her daughters Lillian and Agnes as studio assistants.[14]
At a conservative estimate, Forsyth published about 120 views of Butte, and took many more.[15] To truly appreciate the scale of their historic importance they should be viewed collectively, but some individual images do warrant a closer look as testament to his increasing skill as a stereographer.
“Ready to Blast, 1900 feet under the Butte Post Office”, shows four men crouched at a mine face, holding candles and lighting fuses. His earlier difficulties photographing underground seemingly overcome, it is an image of remarkable clarity and depth. “After the Blast, 1900 Level Stewart Mine” and “Drills at work 1900 feet under Butte” are also consummate examples of the stereographic medium, taken in extremely challenging conditions.
“Balloon Ascension at Columbia Gardens” is one of Forsyth’s most famous images, one of about 30 known views of the Gardens, the best of which manage to capture the optimism of Butte at the dawn of the century. Most of these stereographs can be dated 1907 or earlier as they include the original pavilion, which was destroyed by fire in October that year.[16]
“The Richest Hill on Earth, Butte, Mont.” is one of the most iconic views of Butte, a default choice for photo editors tasked with illustrating articles about the city’s boom years.[17] In the foreground a group of children play in mine tailings, while a woman hangs out laundry. Beyond them lies Dublin Gulch, and beyond Dublin Gulch the Neversweat smelter stacks belch thick smoke into a clear sky. It is an image of incredibly rich detail, and viewed through the stereoscope it becomes something quite extraordinary. It is only then that one can pick out the minute figures of miners descending Anaconda Hill, and a second woman sat apart and alone on the doorstep of her home, perhaps waiting for one of those miners to return.
Similarly, “Looking South to Snow Clad Mountains” is a beautifully composed contrast of Butte’s architecture and industry framed against the snowcapped Highland Mountains. But it is only on closer inspection that one’s eye is drawn to the young woman in the foreground holding a baby, and the young man approaching her along the railroad tracks, lunch pail in hand, their long shadows suggestive of a summer evening – a painterly, very human vignette, captured within an epic vista.
Part 4: On the Flathead (1907-1909).
[1] “Butte Woman’s Father Pilot of Park Trips,” The Montana Standard, Butte, (MT), Sep. 10, 1972
[2] “In The Yellowstone,” The Prod: A Journal of Encouragement, Lincoln, (NE), Mar. 1902
[3] “In The Yellowstone,” The Prod: A Journal of Encouragement, Lincoln, (NE), Mar. 1902
[4] Butte, Silver Bow County, Montana Directory, 1902, R.L. Polk & Company
[5] “University Place,” The Evening News, Lincoln, (NE), Apr. 21, 1902
[6] “Chats with Your Editor,” The Dillon Daily Tribune, Dillon, (MT), Dec. 19, 1949
[7] “Chats with Your Editor,” The Dillon Daily Tribune, Dillon, (MT), Dec. 19, 1949
[8] “President Roosevelt at Finlen Hotel, Butte, Mont.” M.L. Reising Stereograph Collection (PH369), Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives, Butte, (MT)
[9] The Amalgamated Copper shutdown did not start until October 23rd, 1903, and ended on November 10th.
[10] A comparison with another photograph of the event published in The Butte Miner on October 27th, 1903 confirms this. Though taken from a different perspective, there are numerous identical details.
[11] Butte, Silver Bow County, Montana Directory, 1904, R.L. Polk & Company
[12] Letter from Forsyth to Mr. Hamilton, Jul. 30, 1949
[13] Butte, Silver Bow County, Montana Directory, 1906 through 1917, R.L. Polk & Company
[14] Norman Forsyth: The Man and his Legacy, Del Phillips, 1991
[15] The Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles holds over 500 of Forsyth’s glass plate negatives, while the Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives has another 100. An unknown number of contact sheets are held in the Keystone-Mast Collection at the University of California, Riverside. Many of these negatives were never published as stereographs, and conversely there are many stereographs without corresponding negatives.
[16] “Magnificent Pavilion At The Gardens Destroyed By Fire,” The Butte Miner Butte, (MT), Oct. 28, 1907
[17] The earliest example is “Commercial and Industrial Geography” by Keller and Bishop, The Atheneum Press, Boston, (MA), 1912. One frame of this stereograph appears on page 48.