Rare Books
The milk train doesn't stop here anymore
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Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Visual Materials
Train at the Needles train station.
photCL 215 (205)
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Visual Materials
This collection contains photographs, negatives, and some ephemera chiefly collected by California conservationist and editor William H. Thrall (1873-1963) for use in Trails magazine. Thrall served as managing editor of the publication from 1934 to 1939, which was produced to encourage the use of mountain trails and outdoor recreation in Los Angeles County. The collection includes approximately 1200 prints (Boxes 1-4); 68 glass negatives (Boxes 7-8); approximately 2300 film negatives; 150 slides; and miscellaneous documents and ephemera, and a folding pocket camera. The photographs primarily date from the 1930s, but also include copy prints (and some originals) of late 19th and early 20th photographs. The images depict mountain and forested landscapes and outdoor recreational activities including hiking, skiing, and camping, chiefly in the San Gabriel Mountains and surrounding mountains of Southern California. Many of the photographs include individuals involved in recreational activities as well images of historical mountain pioneers. The photographs chiefly consist of 4.5 x 2.75 inch snapshots and 8 x 10 and 6 x 10 inch prints, by photographers including Dan P. Alexander, Carl H. Bauer, Harlow Dormer, C. C. Vernon, and Thrall. There is also a group of glass plate negatives and film negatives, including a group of unprinted film negatives that appear to be personal photographs with views of nature, groups of people, family scenes, buildings, boating, and trips, in the 1930s-1950s (Box 15). The film negatives have handwritten numbers presumably assigned by Thrall. Many of the prints appear in Trails magazine, which was published quarterly by the Mountain League of Southern California from Winter 1934 to Spring 1939 (Volume 6, No. 1). In Autumn 1941, the Southern California Outdoor Federation began publishing a new edition of Trails Magazine (without Thrall as editor), but only two issues were published (Volume 2, Nos. 1-2).
photCL 481
Visual Materials
Cars stopped at a railroad crossing while train passes.
photCL SCE 05 - 55233
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Manuscripts
The collection contains Frank F. Latta's research material from his five decades of researching the history of California's San Joaquin Valley and Miller & Lux, in particular dry farming known as skyfarming. Subjects include: agriculture and farming in the San Joaquin Valley, the development of agricultural machinery (combines, plows, reapers, scrapers, threshing machines, tractors and various types of harvesters), livestock, ranches, cattle, and crops, mostly wheat. Also covered are: early aviation, early automobiles, bears, crime, the Dalton Gang, the Donner Party, earthquakes, education and schools in the San Joaquin Valley, floods, freight and steamships on the San Joaquin River, gold mines, irrigation, canals and water rights in San Joaquin Valley, land grants, livestock, lumber, outlaws, pioneers, the Presbyterian Church in California, ranches, rivers, roads, saddlery, sheepherding in California, overland journeys to California and California politics, government and history. Also talked about are women, African Americans, Chileans, Chinese, Mormons, Native Americans and Jews in California. The collection contains roughly 180 oral interviews with people living in the San Joaquin Valley in the 1930s through the 1970s. One of the series contains drafts of the unpublished manuscript Sky Farmers and Mule Skinners with Something about Hay Muckers, Buckaroos, and Bindle Stiffs and a Sheepherder or Two. Frank F. Latta worked on this manuscript for five decades.
mssLattaS