Our Stay At The Flying V [cover-title]

A photo album comprising 181 images documenting a wealthy family's eight-and-a-half month stay at a dude ranch in Tucson in the 1940s.

This album chronicles the Austin family's time at the "Flying V" Ranch, featuring images of the ranch and its lodgings; dudes on the trail; a "chuckwagon" with African-American cooks; cowboy exhibitions and competitions; skeet shooting; livestock; individuals on horses (posing with rifles and dressed up in cowboy gear) and so on. Many of the images capture women smiling and clearly enjoying themselves. One commercial image shows a sheriff standing at a site where a list of individuals were "legally hanged" in 1884. Several images were evidently taken in locales other than Arizona. The surname of the compiler and her family is taken from the return address on the packet of souvenir photos, which were sent to one "Mrs. R. P. Austin" in Bronxville, New York, presumably the region from which the Austins haled. The date of the album is taken from the postmark on the packet. Bronxville has long been one of the wealthiest suburbs in America.

The Flying V Ranch featured stone and adobe cottages built in the 1920s, some of which lasted until at least the 1990s. Located some sixteen miles north of downtown Tucson, the Ranch was situated below the rugged, red-rock Santa Catalina mountains (which rise to 9,000 feet) and near the Coronado National Forest. In the 1910s, writer Harold Bell Wright (1872-1944) spent time at the ranch after being diagnosed with tuberculosis.

An engaging visual record of the dude ranch experience in Arizona.

REFERENCES: Jackson, Kristin. Arizona-Finding The Right Stuff At A Tucson Guest Ranch (Jul 14, 1991) at seattletimes.com

CONDITION: Good, old streak of adhesive on front cover, photos generally very good.