American MemoryThe National Digital Library Program: Archived Documentation

The Library of Congress / Ameritech National Digital Library Competition (1996-1999)

Image from collection

Denver Public Library

History of the American West, 1860-1920: Photographs from the Collection of the Denver Public Library

Amount of award: $71,250

Denver Public Library will mount 3,500 photographs from its collection documenting the late nineteenth century lives of Native Americans from more than 40 tribes living west of the Mississippi River. The collection provides historical and ethnographic information including formal portraits of Indian chiefs as well as clothing, dwellings, and daily lives of Taos, Santa Clara, San Juan, and San Ildephonso pueblo Indians, and Ute, Crow, and Lakota tribes. The Denver Library will also select approximately 4,000 photographs documenting mining's place in the history of Colorado and the West. The photographs tell a wide range of stories from life in the wide open boom towns of Telluride, Cripple Creek, and Leadville to the national disgrace of the Ludlow coal field massacre. Photographs will include images of mining technology; organized labor, labor unrest, and strikes; mining families and their daily lives; industrialists, union leaders, and politicians; and the domestic and public architecture of Colorado mining communities. The materials digitized with the Library of Congress/Ameritech award will become part of the 48,000 digitized image Western History collection at Denver Public Library. The collection of 48,000 previously digitized images will also be accessible via American Memory.

Online Collection


Image Caption: Miners at home. Louis Charles McClure, [ca. 1900]. (Denver Public Library, Western History/Genealogy Department. Reproduction Number: MCC-43)