Lora Webb Nichols (1883–1962) was an American photographer and diarist.

Early life and education

Nichols was born in

Boulder, Colorado Boulder is a home rule city that is the county seat and most populous municipality of Boulder County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 108,250 at the 2020 United States census, making it the 12th most populous city in Color ...

. Her grandfather was Colorado Lieutenant Governor David H. Nichols. She moved with her family to Encampment, Wyoming.

Life and work

Nichols began photographing in 1899 at age 16. Lucy Davies, writing in ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was fo ...

'', described her work as recording

Wyoming Wyoming () is a U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the south ...

's "inconsequential chores and rituals (washing, shovelling snow, braiding hair) rather than grand events. Even so, her frank, bold pictures capture the clean-cut thrill of pioneer life, of America's hugeness and scope." Around 1905, Nichols built a

darkroom A darkroom is used to process photographic film, to make prints and to carry out other associated tasks. It is a room that can be made completely dark to allow the processing of the light-sensitive photographic materials, including film and ph ...

and worked as a photographer and a photo finisher. In 1925, she founded three businesses in Encampment: the Rocky Mountain Studio which developed film and loaned cameras; ''The Encampment Echo'' newspaper; and The Sugar Bowl, selling soda and ice cream. When cowboys and young men in the

Civilian Conservation Corps The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a voluntary government work relief program that ran from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men ages 18–25 and eventually expanded to ages 17–28. The CCC was a major part of ...

passed through town, Nichols would loan them a camera and ask them to return with photographs. These images represent about a third of her archive. In 1935, she moved to

Stockton, California Stockton is a city in and the county seat of San Joaquin County, California, San Joaquin County in the Central Valley (California), Central Valley of the U.S. state of California. Stockton was founded by Carlos Maria Weber in 1849 after he acquir ...

and worked in a children's home, eventually becoming its director. She returned to Encampment in 1956, where she died in 1962.

Personal life

She had six children.

Legacy

There are 24000 photographs in Nichols' archive, 16000 of them taken by her, held at the American Heritage Center of the University of Wyoming. That archive also includes a manuscript for her unfinished memoir, ''I Remember: a Girl's Eye View of Early Days in the Rocky Mountains''. Her diaries and other photographs are held at Grand Encampment Museum in Encampment.

Publications

*''Encampment, Wyoming: Selections from the Lora Webb Nichols Archive 1899–1948''. Amsterdam: Fw, 2020. Edited by Nicole Jean Hill. . With essays by Nancy F. Anderson and Hill. **Amsterdam: Fw, 2021.

References

External links

*
Nichols' archive at the American Heritage Center of the University of WyomingNichols' archive at the Grand Encampment Museum
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nichols, Lora Webb 1962 deaths 1883 births 20th-century American photographers 19th-century American photographers Photographers from Colorado 20th-century American women photographers 19th-century American women photographers People from Boulder, Colorado Photographers from Wyoming People from Carbon County, Wyoming