Alaska

Three different formats. Thirteen photographs. Original photographs, black-white. Mostly full-page format, without a framing. With commentaries at the back sides (Swedish Language). Photographs with some minor crinkles at corners and little rubbing. Partly a bit faded at the edges but mostly still with good contrasts. Paper is a bit bent. Appropriate to its age and origin still in good condition. The thirteen photographs include different views on the former copper smelting town Hadley at the Prince of Wales Island (Alaska, US). In Hadley once the mined copper ores have been melted and processed, later the extracted copper was shipped to other places. The photographs exist in three different formats: a small one (ca. 16,4 x 21,5 cm), a middle size (ca. 19,1 x 24,1 cm) and a bigger format (ca. 20 x 25,2 cm). The black-white photographs still own their contrast although a few of them are fading a little bit at the edges. The thirteen photographs give us very different perspectives on this historical place: smelter buildings seen from the near and distanced overviews from a ship. Detailled views on the pier with rails, on a building in construction (in snow), on a ship at the pier and on a cleared piece of land probably for new buildings. One photograph is even showing one of the ships (for travelling) called "Marion". A main overview owns a small stamp and note at the front: "Alaska Smelting & Refining Co. / General View Smelter Buildings". Most of the photographs own commentaries on the back sides in swedish language. Some with two or three lines, a few with ten lines of text (Please see the given fotografic examples). The photographs very probably have been made by a swedish engineer working at Hadley. There has been copper mining and extracting in Sweden long before Alaska became a part of the US. One photograph shows two little girls with blond hair staying in the wood. It seems to be a family portrait, maybe they have been the daughters of this swedish man. There is also an envelope (newer one by Svenska Handelsbanken) with the handwritten swedish title: "Fotografier fran Hadley Alaska". Very rare historical material from Alaska in the first two decades of the 20th century!