A home in Raleigh County, West Virginia, May 1996, a 35 mm slide by Lyntha Scott Eiler for the Coal River Folklife Project and the American Folklife Center, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Tag: American Folklife Center
Vintage landscape: willow corral
Moving cattle into a willow branding corral on Ninety-Six Ranch, Paradise Valley, Nevada, October 1979, by Carl Fleischhauer, via American Folklife Center, Library of Congress (all photos here).
Willow corrals are still used on Ninety-Six Ranch. In 2014, Kris Stewart, one of the current owners, told Carl Fleishhauer:
We are concerned with staying with original willow corrals – that is definitely part of Great Basin ranching. They are safer in every way; they have some give to them. And they are the cheapest fencing from a materials standpoint since almost everything is naturally already on the ranch.
Vintage landscape: horseshoes
Horseshoe gate on the Pedroli Ranch, Paradise Valley, Nevada, July 1978, (35mm slide) by Richard E. Ahlborn, via American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress (both photos).
The ranch house gate was made by Pete Pedroli about 1950. It has a counterweight for self closing. . .
. . . and a latch made from a bridle bit.
There’s another photo of the house and gate here, by Carl Fleishhauer.
Vintage landscape: red fence
Buckingham Residence, Paradise Valley, Nevada, July 1978, (35mm slide) by Suzi Jones, via American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress (all photos here).
The house, the oldest in the town, was originally built as a hotel for a mining settlement. It was later disassembled and rebuilt in Paradise Valley.
White Fence
Also from the Folklife Center’s Paradise Valley* collection. . .
This residence on the Ninety-Six Ranch was built around 1900, added onto a bunkhouse/dining hall from the 1880s (shown below).
The ranch has been in the same family’s ownership since 1864. The ox yoke above the gate may have had particular significance for them, as their ancestor — a German immigrant named William Stock — first saw the land while hauling freight from California.
There are other views of the home here and here.
Grey fence
One more picket fence image from the same collection. . .
The house was built by Stefano Ferraro, an Italian immigrant who bought the ranch land in 1902. It is still family owned.
According to the Folklife Center’s notes, the cottonwood trees that were planted behind the house by Stephano “were among the tallest in the valley.”
There is a 1934 view of the home here.
*From 1978 to 1982, the Center conducted an ethnographic field project in this distinctive ranching and mining community. The study became the collection “Buckaroos in Paradise: Ranching Culture in Northern Nevada, 1945-1982.”
The Sunday porch: Paradise Valley
Ranch House with Porch, Paradise Valley, Humboldt County, Nevada, July 1978, (35mm slide) by Suzi Jones, via American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress (all photos here).
The house — of adobe construction — served as the officer’s quarters of Fort Scott in the late 1860s. In 1978, it was the main residence of Fort Scott Ranch.
There is another view here, by Howard W. Marshall.
The photos here are three of over two thousand taken or collected for the Folklife Center’s 1972-1982 ethnographic field project on the Paradise Valley area. The work became the collection* “Bucharoos in Paradise: Ranching Culture in Northern Nevada, 1945-1982.”
There’s another photo of the ranch house and its outbuildings here.
Poll results
For the last two Sundays, I ran a little poll asking how readers look at enclos*ure — 1) on a desktop computer or Mac; 2) on an e-reader; or 3) on a smartphone? Of those who responded, 82% use a desktop and the others use an e-reader.
*It also contains sound recordings and motion picture film.
enclos*ure 