Then & Now

[DAW89446]

Nice work... still can't believe Greenwater was the site of so much speculation.

Those years were full of speculation and the Death Valley region certainly got more than its share.

[DAW89446]

Seven Troughs, Nevada. This site is in northern Nevada, about 30 miles north of Lovelock. It boomed in the first decade of the 20th century.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PafSjK2...sp=sharing

This composition contains a historical image, with a 2013 shot that I took in approximately the same location as the photographer more than a century previous. At the right edge are impressions dug out of the hillside to accommodate the rear portion of the structures. I'm standing on the former main street. Buildings on the north side of the street (left) had their forward portions on the street level, with framework holding up the rear as the buildings hung out over the slope.


https://drive.google.com/file/d/1x6tbaB_...sp=sharing

In this image I combined the historical with the modern images.

The alignment isn't perfect, but I was shooting this by memory as I didn't have my copy of NEVADA GHOST TOWNS & MINING CAMPS with me.

[DAW89446]

Another of Seven Troughs, NV. I did these shortly after the trip, but combined two separate images so that I could place them side by side in the same image.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xr31GXU...sp=sharing

In this image, many of the same buildings as shown in the post above are shown, giving one a better perspective of the main "downtown" of the community. Again, I was going by memory of the orientation of the historical image, which I didn't have with me at the time I visited in 2013.

[GowerGulch42]

Wow, these are fantastic! Do you know of a way to guess the focal length of a lens from this era? Knowing the size of the negative would help, but is that information even known in many of these?

[DAW89446]

Wow, these are fantastic! Do you know of a way to guess the focal length of a lens from this era? Knowing the size of the negative would help, but is that information even known in many of these?

Thank you.

I believe the optical quality and specifics of the lenses of yesteryear and today make up for at least some of the disparity and challenge to truly and accurately duplicate images.

Unless the photographer left behind field notes, it would be difficult to determine the cameras and lenses used. Large format cameras were the norm for those scenes from the 1800s and probably the early 1900s, but hand held cameras were becoming more common as well in the 1905-1920 era. I've got a hand held, folding bellows c.1917 Zeiss-Ikon in my collection that is of a similar size of a 35mm SLR.

[DAW89446]

Found another Skidoo comparison on another drive, utilizing the two in my original post. I created the Skidoo and Greenwater images after an October, 2002 trip. This one is similar to my combined historic and current image of Seven Troughs above.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HEfG9Xa...sp=sharing

This image was the middle image I created of a series of images for a video of my trip to Skidoo and Greenwater; creating a morph from the historic to the modern and back again.

Unfortunately I cannot access my video of that trip, as it's on VHS tape. I no longer have a VHS VCR. I've got more than two dozen VHS tapes that I need to digitize some day. I managed to digitize about a dozen when my two DVD/VHS VCRs with dubbing capability bit the bullet and they're no longer available except for refurbished and at prohibitive prices.

[DAW89446]

Now for something more modern. And I am the original "historic" photographer and I am the "modern" photographer.

Near Winnemucca is a small mine camp. My understanding is that this mine camp was populated and operated after the Depression, paused during the government sanctions during World War 2, then resumed until the late 1950s or early 1960s.

I first found out about the camp about 2014 and it was in September, 2015 when a friend took me there. A year or two later a large wildfire - caused by a carless smoker throwing a lit butt from his vehicle while changing a tire on Interstate 80 - swept for over a week and destroyed several hundred thousand acres in two valleys and one mountain range; including the mine camp. In October, 2019 a friend and I were chukar hunting and decided to go see what, if anything was left at the mine camp.

As with the other images, I was shooting from memory, so alignment isn't perfect. Each image contains the before and after scenes.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1X3_UFM7...sp=sharing

At the lower end of the camp, located in a canyon bottom, is this picturesque mill.


https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cJjVgGT...sp=sharing

Inside the mill was this neat shaker table. The flywheel freely rotated, moving the table back and forth.


The images below show the various homes above the mill.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1din5-C_...sp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HBbPs5Q...sp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cx737cL...sp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1P63m7Mo...sp=sharing

The bottom image is taken in a side canyon from that of the main mine camp. There were two standing structures there. Flames barely caught this one but left the other alone. Ironic, because the unmolested cabin was close to the main line of fire.

[DAW89446]

And for grins, sometimes I like to fantasize about being part of history. The joys of Photoshop!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PMBZZ-w...sp=sharing

I created this as a joke to send to Desert Fog, a fellow member of this form, about a decade ago as he has a large blog page on Ryan camp.

[MojaveGeek]

More good ones. I like the one with the hands where the belt wheel used to be. Sad though to lose the site. And the Ryan baby gauge... very cute !