Three Cabinet Cards of Colorado Wildlife.: A Favorite of Teddy Roosevelt

Three Cabinet Cards of Colorado Wildlife. Lay, Colorado: A. G Wallihan. [Circa 1890s] Albumin photographs 19.4 x 11.5 cm on slightly curved mount 20.3 x 12.5 cm. Titles are in the negatives. On verso: Wallihan's Big Game Photographs, Taken from live wild game. Consisting of 19 Deer Photographs, 5 Elk photographs, 5 Antelope Photographs, 2 Mountain Lion Photographs and 1 Coyote Photograph. A. G. Wallihan, Lay, Routt Co., Colo. A few edge stains and spots, else very good.

A. 600 Elk No. 5 Wallihan, Lay, Colo.

B. Elk No. 3 Wallihan, Lay, Colo.

C. Cougar No. 1 Copyrighted A. G. Wallihan, Lay, Colo.

OCLC shows two holdings (BYU-Provo & Denver Public Lib.) Princeton also holds some Wallihan photographs but apparently not these images. Rare Book Hub shows one auction listing for a Wallihan photo. Allen Grant Wallihan (1859 – 1934) was an early Colorado pioneer, friend of Teddy Roosevelt and the first wildlife photographer. "The Wallihans arrived in Northwest Colorado in the mid-1880s eventually settling near Lay … Though the Wallihans stayed busy as the Lay postmasters and running a boarding house, in 1889 Augusta suggested that A.G. should try to photograph the abundant wildlife in the area. Surprisingly, wildlife photography hadn't been seriously attempted due to the precarious size of cameras and the complicated developing processes of the day. The Wallihans were soon able to trade some travelers for a camera, and A.G. began learning how to shoot and produce photographs in the middle of nowhere. A.G. Wallihan was soon capturing stunning images of wild animals, the first of their kind. … Wallihan's photographs caught the attention of an occasional hunter to the area: … eventual US President Theodore Roosevelt. They kept in touch, and by 1894 Wallihan had enough photographs to publish his first book. Roosevelt wrote the introduction for it as well as for their follow-up book in 1901." - Knowles. "The Wallihans — The World's First Wildlife Photographers." - Museum of Northwest Colorado, online article.