Skagway’s Camera Club: Amateur Photography After the Klondike Gold Rush

H. C. Barley’s store in Skagway, at 4th and Broadway (National Park Service, Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, Candy Waugaman Collection).

The Klondike Gold Rush was photographed by professionals, but once it was over, Skagway, Alaska, kept taking pictures for fun. The Skagway Camera Club met weekly, organized outings and heard lectures, and then faded away so quietly that it left barely a trace beyond newspaper items and a few photographs. A student intern with the National Park Service pieced its story together from the Daily Alaskan newspaper.

From professionals to snapshots

Many of the best-known gold rush photographs were taken by professionals. By then, though, photography had become a fad among ordinary people, largely thanks to George Eastman, who invented roll film in 1885. His first inexpensive Kodak camera appeared in 1888. It took round pictures 2½ inches across and carried enough film for 100 exposures. When the roll was full, the owner sent the camera back to the factory, which developed the prints, loaded new film and returned everything. Those cameras were big and boxy, with non-adjustable lenses, and their “snapshots” were less sharp than professional work. But for over 100 years such pictures have recorded the events of ordinary people’s lives.

One early recreational photographer of the gold rush was Mollie Brackett, who lived in Skagway from 1898 to 1899. Her photo album from the period was found years later in the trunk of a repossessed car in southern California, and many of her snapshots were published in 1996 in the book One Woman’s Gold Rush.

A lecture starts a club

A talk by professional photographer Harrie C. Barley, given through Skagway’s Y.M.C.A., led to the club. Barley had been the White Pass & Yukon Route’s company photographer for two years from the spring of 1898. He was known for risking his life to get the perfect picture of railroad construction, and once stood too close to a blast that destroyed one of his cameras. A March 31, 1900 Daily Alaskan described his lecture manner as happy and breezy, though for many in the large audience it must have been too technical. Even so, twenty people gave their names for membership in the new Y.M.C.A. Camera Club, and at an organizational meeting on April 13 thirty charter members enrolled. The club voted to equip a dark room and to meet weekly.

Photography was also good business for its founders. William H. Case became the first club president and Barley the treasurer. Case and Hubert H. Draper had opened their studio in a tent in February 1898 under a sign advertising Alaska views, and later moved to a two-story store on Broadway, almost across from Barley’s studio.

More than photography

Skagway’s population, which may have been over 10,000 two years earlier, had shrunk to around 3,000 by 1900, but those who stayed were less transient and eager to join groups. The club was one of many, and a social one: a photo of a club picnic at Burro Creek on June 22, 1900 shows about 35 people sitting close together and sharing dishes, with two tripod-mounted cameras visible. The only person apparently shooting anything is holding a pistol, and the caption says Doctor Hall was shooting at a squirrel in a tree. The photo was taken by Case & Draper. Hall served as club president.

A group sitting on logs in a forest (National Park Service, Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, Stinebaugh Collection).

The club got darkroom space in the Y.M.C.A.’s rented rooms after they were remodeled following a March 1900 fire. The Y.M.C.A. itself ran into trouble. A dispute in August over admitting African American soldiers of Skagway’s Company L was followed by falling membership and money, and it shut its gymnasium in October 1901. The camera club kept meeting, mostly under the plain name Camera Club, in rooms on State Street and later on Broadway, and sometimes at Case & Draper’s store. Winter meetings leaned toward the social: one in October 1900 was a “social” with guests and a subject of flashlight photography, and in November 1901 the club was entertained by its entertainment committee.

Fading out

In 1902 the club reported a very profitable winter season, regular and well-attended meetings, and more than a dozen applications for membership. Signs of change followed. The secretary, W. W. Shorthill, resigned in May to go to Treadwell, a planned hike to Glacier Lake was changed when only three members showed up in June, and in October long-time president Dr. Hall stepped down, though he stayed on as secretary.

A group climbing on a glacier (National Park Service, Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, Stinebaugh Collection).

Skagway’s businesses were in turmoil too. In fall 1902 several stores advertised going-out-of-business sales: Barley’s Art Studio offered Kodak cameras and photographs for as little as 10 cents, and Case & Draper cut cameras from $5 to $1.50 and an album of 200 views to $2.50. Barley closed his store in May 1903 and moved to San Francisco, where he died on November 22, 1909. Case and Draper split in September 1907. Case died in Juneau on July 16, 1920, and Draper in Skagway on August 14, 1913.

The club may have stopped formal operation by the end of 1902 or early 1903. The reason is hard to pinpoint, but Skagway’s population kept falling, people active in the first year left, competing activities such as basketball games appeared, and interest was probably hard to sustain in winter, when no outings were planned and the dark room’s water supply froze. That leaves a question the author asks: what happened to the members’ own snapshots, and will another album like Mollie Brackett’s turn up in an attic or a garage sale?

Sources

• National Park Service, Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, “Skagway’s Camera Club” (https://www.nps.gov/articles/klgo-camera-club.htm), researched and written by a 2012 Student Conservation Association intern, and first presented as a radio history talk on December 18, 2012; rewritten in hubnx’s own words.