We recently acquired a photograph album showing a large farming and ranching family in Estes Park, Colorado, ca. 1905-1915. We know the names of three brothers: Stuart, Gordon, and Charles Mace. Also pictured in the album are the wives and children of the Maces.

People from 100 years ago … they’re just like us!

They go for horsey rides!

They like cute bunnies!

When they take a bath in a bucket, they get their picture taken!

They … oh, no. Don’t do THAT…

Hat tip to Us Magazine’s Stars: They’re Just Like Us

We invite you to enjoy a new mini-exhibition in the display case in the garden level of Tutt Library: Ten Great Reads from the Feminist Lesbian Sci-Fi Boom of the 1970s: Sandra Gail Lambert Picks Her Favorites from an Unsung Genre.

Read Lambert’s article here: https://lithub.com/10-great-reads-from-the-feminist-lesbian-sci-fi-boom-of-the-1970s/

The Colorado College library now has every book mentioned in this article. Some have truly fantastic pulp paperback covers. Here’s an example:

The Colorado College LGBT Oral History Project is now up and running in Digital CC!

The project includes audio recordings of interviews with lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and allied Colorado College faculty, staff, and alumni, along with Colorado Springs community participants. The interviews were done between January 2011 and May 2012. The founding director of the project was Andrew Wallace, CC class of 2012.

Participants in the project include, in alphabetical order, Rob Adkisson (CC class of 1992), Nate Bower (CC Chemistry faculty 1977-2017), Bruce Coriell (CC Chaplain 1988-2016), Mike Edmonds (CC Dean of Students 1991-present), Heinz Geppert (CC German faculty 1991-2013, Karl Jeffries (CC class of 1991), Bruce Loeffler (CC Geology faculty 1977-1999), Eva McGeehan (co-founder of the Colorado Springs chapter of PFLAG), Ginger Morgan (CC staff 1987-2012), and Frank Mosher (CC class of 1969; CC staff 1987-present).

Subjects including: coming out, Out and About (this Colorado College organization, founded 1985, became the LGBT Alliance), Amendment 2, homophobia, discrimination, HIV and AIDS, gay rights, same-sex marriage, and the 1991 founding of the Colorado Springs chapter of PFLAG (Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays).

We hope eventually to offer transcriptions of the interviews. Please contact Jessy Randall (jrandall@coloradocollege.edu) if you’d like to volunteer to transcribe.

ADDENDUM, 2023: see also the LGBTQ+ Oral History Project of 2022-2023. 

Every year at Homecoming, Special Collections holds an open house. This year our open house yielded not one but two amazing photograph donations.

Melinda Eager Poole (CC class of 1978) donated a scrapbook belonging to her grandfather, Leonard Prentice Eager. The scrapbook covers his freshman and sophomore years at CC, 1912-1914. It’s full of photographs of CC students in outdoor areas around Colorado Springs, including this one showing a dozen or so people perched on a railroad bridge, possibly the Pikes Peak Cog Rail.

David Ford (CC class of 1972) was a photographer for the Nugget during his senior year. He donated about a hundred photos from that period, including many portraits and campus scenes. Here are just two fantastic shots from his donation:

Thank you, Melinda and David — you make my job easy and fun!

We are fairly certain this is the first online appearance of a photograph labeled “Trail to H.H. Grave,” numbered 642, Hook Photo. The date is likely 1890.

Writer and activist Helen Hunt Jackson (known in her lifetime as H.H., Helen Hunt, or Helen Jackson) died in 1885. She was buried in South Cheyenne Canyon, but so many people visited the site that her grave was moved to Evergreen Cemetery in 1891. The address for W.E. Hook on the back of photo is 509 N Tejon, Colorado Springs, Colorado, an address first used in 1890.

The photograph is a recent gift of Alan Campbell, former Colorado College Psychology staff. As far as we can tell, no other institution holds a print of this image.

Citation: Colorado Room Photo File for Helen Hunt Jackson, Colorado College Special Collections.

CC History Professor Bryant T. “Tip” Ragan donated this amazing book to Special Collections in December of 2017:

The title is something like Manuscript Atlas of Korea, China, and Japan or Tae Choson Chido (Great Korean Map). It has wood covers, thirteen hand-drawn, hand-colored maps each covering two pages, and twelve additional pages of manuscript text, all on thick rice paper. It was probably made ca. 1800.

Tip writes: When I was little, my family lived in Seoul.  My father purchased this atlas at that time, in about 1970. He was intrigued because of the myths incorporated into the manuscript, as well as the beauty of the book. I wanted to give the book to an institution in which it would be used, rather than have it sit at home and gather dust. At first, I thought that it would make most sense to give it to a major research library. But I realized that I wanted, instead, to give it to CC, the institution that is dearest to my heart. I knew that it would be cared for by our great team in Special Collections, and I also liked the idea that generations of our students, especially those in Korean history and history of the book courses, would be able to study it.

Similar atlases are at the Library of Congress (see lower left) and for sale at the Paulus Swaen Auction and Gallery and Arader Galleries.

We look forward to finding out more about this book in the weeks to come. Thank you, Tip, for the gift!!