Photograph album of Owens Valley, 1905-1906
Processed by Jane Carpenter with assistance from Simon Elliott; machine-readable finding aid created by Caroline Cubé.
UCLA Library Special Collections
© 2013
Room A1713, Charles E. Young Research Library
Box 951575
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1575
Email: spec-coll@library.ucla.edu
URL: http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/special/scweb/
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
Title: Photograph album of Owens Valley
Date (inclusive): 1905-1906
Collection number: 94/194
Creator:
Stowell, Nathan W. (Nathan William), b. 1851.
Physical Description:
1 album (28 photographic prints) : gelatin silver, 18 x 41 cm (album)
Photographs are panoramic views, oriented horizontally (89 x 273 mm), and are mounted on rectos of leaves of heavy black paper, one to a page. Captions identifying location and date of each photograph are printed on slips of white paper affixed below photographs.
Bound in plain black paper covers; bound with faded gray silk ribbon threaded through four holes punched along left margin.
Spec. Coll. copy: in modern beige cloth clamshell box (21 x 43 cm), with box title "Owens Valley."
Photographs are panoramic views, oriented horizontally (89 x 273 mm), and are mounted on rectos of leaves of heavy black paper, one to a page. Captions identifying location and date of each photograph are printed on slips of white paper affixed below photographs.
Bound in plain black paper covers; bound with faded gray silk ribbon threaded through four holes punched along left margin.
Spec. Coll. copy: in modern beige cloth clamshell box (21 x 43 cm), with box title "Owens Valley."
Abstract: Album containing 28 gelatin silver photographs of Owens Valley and surrounding area, dated between July 1905 and February
1906.
Language: Finding aid is written in
English.
Language of the Material:
Materials are in English.
Repository:
University of California, Los Angeles. Library Special Collections.
Los Angeles, California 90095-1575
Physical location: Stored off-site at SRLF. Advance notice is required for access to the collection. Please contact UCLA Library Special Collections
for paging information.
Open for research. STORED OFF-SITE AT SRLF. Advance notice is required for access to the collection. Please contact UCLA Library
Special Collections for paging information.
Restrictions on Use and Reproduction
Property rights to the physical object belong to the UC Regents. Literary rights, including copyright, are retained by the
creators and their heirs. It is the responsibility of the researcher to determine who holds the copyright and pursue the copyright
owner or his or her heir for permission to publish where The UC Regents do not hold the copyright.
Provenance/Source of Acquisition
Formerly owned by Nathan William Stowell, and presented to the UCLA Library by Mrs. George Leslie Ellsworth in 1981.
[Identification of item], Photograph album of Owens Valley (Collection 94/194). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles
E. Young Research Library, UCLA.
UCLA Catalog Record ID:
4233582
California engineer and land developer. Nathan W. Stowell was born in Claremont, New Hampshire in 1851, studied engineering
as a young man, and moved to California in 1874 where he became involved with land development and irrigation projects, in
Rialto, Corona, Ontario, East Whittier, and especially Cucamonga and the Imperial Valley. His business ventures included the
Stowell Cement Pipe Company, the Cucamonga Fruit Land Company, the Cucamonga Land and Improvement Company, the Ontario Power
Company, the Pacific Sewer Pipe Company, the California Development Company, and the Imperial Valley Water Company Number
1.
The photographs capture panoramic vistas of mountains, canyons, lakes, reservoirs, and desert in and around Owens Valley,
including the Alabama Hills running through the center of the valley, and the White Mountains north of Bishop; towns of Lone
Pine, Independence, Cottonwood and Bishop; Owens Lake at the south end of the valley, as well as Long Lake, Little Lake, Lower
Lake, Twin Lakes, and Emerald Lake, some of the 4000 lakes in the Sierra Nevada; and Cottonwood Canyon, south of Lake Tahoe.
There is also a photo, dated August 1905, of the Shepherd Ranch House, built by homesteader John Shepherd in 1873, and supposedly
the first 2-story frame dwelling in Owens Valley, located one-half mile west of Manzanar, between Lone Pine and Independence.
Shepherd sold his ranch to land developer George Chaffey (and friend and business associate of Nathan Stowell) in 1905, the
same year that Los Angeles announced that it was building an aqueduct to supply the city with water from the Owens Valley.
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.
Shepherd, John, fl. 1864-1905 --Homes and haunts --Photographs.
United States Highway 395 --Photographs.
Owens Valley (Calif.) --Photographs.
Owens Lake (Inyo County, Calif.) --Photographs.
Alabama Hills (Calif.) --Photographs.
Little Lake (Calif.) --Photographs.
Cottonwood (Calif.) --Photographs.
Sierra Nevada (Calif. and Nev.) --Photographs.
White Mountains (Calif. and Nev.) --Photographs.
Lone Pine (Calif.) --Photographs.
Independence (Calif.) --Photographs.
Big Pine (Calif.) --Photographs.
Bishop (Calif.) --Photographs.
Photographic prints.
Photograph albums.
Gelatin silver prints.
Other Index Terms Related to this Collection
Owens Valley
Ellsworth, George Leslie, Mrs., former owner.
Part of the
Photograph Album Collection (Collection 94)
in UCLA Library Special Collections.
Additional information on Nathan Stowell available in the Nathan W. Stowell Papers, 1852-1925, at the Huntington Library,
San Marino, CA 91108.