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A Forestry and Environmental Collection
An amazing collection of American environmental photographs were created and cataloged by faculty, staff, and students in the Department of Botany at the University of Chicago from the 1890s to the 1930s.
The earliest photographs in the collection were taken in 1891 in the arid desert
landscapes of California, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada. The latest images were made in the
Hawaiian Islands in 1936. Photographs in the collection were developed in a variety of
sizes and formats and preserved by the Department of Botany as glass plate negatives,
mounted prints, and glass lantern slides.
The University of Chicago Department of Botany scoured the United States and developed a photographic collection of forests, landscapes, and trees that is unequaled by either volume or quality. It is highlighted by the Library of Congress on the American Memory site. It is rare to see the American chestnut left to its final fate or to see a turpentine tree of such magnitude as an ancient longleaf pine (Pinus palustris).
Cameras accompanied Department of Botany faculty and students on field trips across the United States. A search by state will show the diversity regions produced:
This collection consists of approximately 4,500 photographs documenting natural environments, ecologies, and plant communities in the United States at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. This group of American botanists were generally regarded as one of the most influential in the development of modern ecological studies.
They were extremely interested in trees and woody stemed plants. A vast collection of tree photos give us a record of what we had growing nearly 100 years ago.
These photographs provide an overview of important representative natural landscapes
across the nation. They demonstrate the character of a wide range of American topography,
its forestation, aridity, shifting coastal dune complexes, and watercourses. Comparison of
early photographs with later views highlights changes resulting from natural alterations
of the landscape, disturbances from industry and development, and effective natural
resource usage. The photographs were taken by Henry Chandler Cowles (1869-1939), George
Damon Fuller (1869-1961), and other Chicago ecologists on field trips across the North
American continent.
Links to Other Urban Forestry Sites:
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