Alaska

Three different formats. Nine photographs. Original photographs, black-white. Mostly full-page format, without a framing. Some with short notes at the back side (English 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 nine 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 few of them are fading a bit at the edges. The photographs are giving us different perspectives on this place: smelter buildings seen from the near and distanced overviews from a ship. One photograph is even showing a smelter building from the inside. A few others show the nature and waters around the town. We also can see the small pier where once the copper has been prepared for shipping. The main overview owns a small stamp and note at the front: "Alaska Smelting & Refining Co. / General View of Hadley Smelter". A few others own a small note on their back side (english language). A photograph showing the waterways around the town for example is titled: "'Hole in the wall' by Hadley, Alaska". Another one was titled: "View to the north from waterbank showing boilerstacks and wharfes". The photographs very probably have been made by a swedish engineer working at Hadley. Other photographs from the same collection (second offer) own a lot of swedish notes and commentaries at their back sides and contain some more private views. Very rare historical material from Alaska in the first two decades of the 20th century!