Automobile Club of Southern California collection of photographs and negatives

The collection consists of 6240 black-and-white and color photographs, pen and ink drawings, and postcards, 1412 black-and-white and color negatives, 2606 black-and-white and color slides, and ephemeral materials, 1898-1982 (bulk 1920s-1930s). The Automobile Club of Southern California collected the materials, and they form a general photographic reference collection as well as a broad visual survey of topics of interest to California motorists. Included are images of sites in North and Central America (with an emphasis on California), Europe, the Pacific Islands, and portraits, as well as images related to other subjects of interest to the Club's membership. Many of the images were published as illustrations for articles in the Club's first member magazine, Touring Topics.

The collection is divided into three sections: a reference section, forming the bulk of the collection; images from the Club's cross-country expeditions; and slides. The reference section consists of both geographic and "subject" photographs. The bulk of the geographic images are devoted to California. These include, but are not limited to, sites in the city of Los Angeles and environs; Imperial, Kern, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, and Santa Barbara Counties; the San Bernardino, San Jacinto, San Gabriel and Sierra Nevada Mountains; the Mojave and Colorado Deserts; national parks located in California (Lassen Volcanic National Park, Lava Beds National Park, Sequoia National Park, and Yosemite National Park); the Sacramento River; the Saint Francis Dam (after the disaster); San Francisco; and the California coastline (including Santa Catalina Island, Big Sur, and the Monterey Peninsula). The reference section also contains images related to California Motorgraphs and Rotogravures, pull-out supplements published in Touring Topics. The Rotogravures sections contained scenic views of sites in California, and the published images were often toned. The Motorgraphs feature focused on touring in California. Both the Motorgraphs and Rotogravures include images of especial interest to California motorists, specifically landscapes and sites in the western United States and Mexico, many of which are documented in other sections of the collection.

Locations outside of California documented in the reference section include a number of images of surrounding states, such as Arizona (with a large number of images of the Grand Canyon), Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Washington. These include miscellaneous desert scenes; national parks and monuments (including Glacier National Park, Grand Teton National Park, Yellowstone National Park, Bryce Canyon, Zion National Park, and the Olympic Mountains); Native Americans and Native American sites (with an emphasis on Arizona, the Navajo, and New Mexico, but also including Indians of Central and Latin America); and missions (in Arizona, California, Mexico and New Mexico). Other locations include western Canada (primarily British Columbia); Guatemala; and a large section devoted to Mexico. A substantial portion of the Mexican images document the First and Second International Pacific Highway Expeditions. Other Mexican images concentrate on the states of Baja California, Sonora, and Sinaloa. Other non-California locations include images of European cities and sites; New Zealand; and islands in the Pacific (including the Fiji islands and Tahiti).

The non-geographic subjects in the reference section include such diverse topics as astronomy; automobile accessories; gift suggestions; highways and bridges; mining camps and ghost cities; paintings and prints (copies of paintings, prints, maps, and earlier photographs depicting a wide variety of subjects); road signs; transportation (including many images of the Butterfield stagecoach station and line); and western fauna and flora.

The portraits in the reference section were used to illustrate general articles as well as editorial statements, and include portraits of the era's important cultural, literary, and artistic figures in California and the American West.

The collection's second section is composed of photographs taken on some of the Club's cross-country tours in the 1920s. Many of these tours followed the routes of some historic roadways in various parts of the country, and the collection contains images of roadways and historic sites in 31 states, Canada, and Mexico, and including parts of the National Old Trails (in Arizona and New Mexico); the Lincoln Highway (in Iowa, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, and Wyoming); the King of Trails (in Minnesota, Nebraska, Texas, and Winnipeg, Canada); Arrowhead Trail Highway (in Nevada); and various eastern highways and roadways. Also depicted are a "test highway"; road signs in the Midwest and the South; an unidentified trip undertaken in the 1920s (recognizable by the license plate of the Auto Club vehicle); and miscellaneous unidentified roadways and sites.

The collection's third section is composed of slides in a variety of formats and sizes that primarily depict landscapes in California, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon, and other western United States locales. These were either sent to the Auto Club, or collected by the Automobile Club's Travel Research and Publications Department from both individuals and public venues throughout California. The pictures depict downtown Los Angeles, museums, theme parks, tourist attractions, state and national parks, and other sites in California. These are accompanied by letters that can be found with the collection's ephemeral materials at the end of box 35.

A large portion of the photographs (boxes 1-35) were taken by authors of articles that appeared in Touring Topics; others were commissioned by the Club; and others appear to have been sent to the Club. The majority of the photographs in boxes 1-35 have names and addresses of photographers on the verso. Photographers (and authors) include, but are not limited to, Ansel Adams, Fred Archer, Viroque Baker, George Hugh Banning, Adelbert Bartlett, Virginia S. Bartlett, Andrew R. Boone, Julius Cindrich, Norman Clyde, Will Connell, Loyd Cooper, Imogen Cunningham, Asahel Curtis, Edward Sheriff Curtis, Fred Dapprich, E.H. Davis, E.E. East, John Anson Ford, Frasher, Ewing Galloway, Forman G. Hanna, Phil Townsend Hanna, Hoag and Ford, John Edwin Hoag, Bert W. Huntoon, Philip Johnston, Dr. Frederick Monsen, Dave Packwood, C.C. Pierce, Ernest M. Pratt, Putnam Studios, E. Willard Spurr, and John L. Von Blon. See the Photographer's Index at the end of the Container List for images associated with the aforementioned photographers. A card file in the office of the Curator of Photographs provides a complete list of specific item numbers associated with all photographers. Many of the original articles in which the photographs appeared have been identified; this information is listed on the envelopes. Other photographs appear to have been published, and possess captions or identifying information on the verso. However, a large number of the photographs are unidentified as to location and/or content.

The photographs resulting from the cross-country tours (boxes 36-37) seem to have been taken by the participants, engineers and draftsmen who worked for the Auto Club.

Original negatives exist for a number of the photographs; these can be found in boxes 41-47 and are housed separately in cold storage. Of these, approximately fifty percent were not printed; this is indicated in the Container List. Some images exist in duplicate.

The majority of the slides (boxes 48-58) appear to be taken by the same individual(s) on an unspecified number of trips throughout the western United States.

Ephemeral materials accompanying the photographs include captions, brochures, letters, press releases, and original envelopes. The collection is also accompanied by a photographer index compiled by Huntington volunteers.

In 1987, 206 prints by photographers generally working in the Pictorialist style were removed from the collection and transferred to the Huntington's Art Division. Information about these prints is not included in this finding aid. For more information about these holdings, contact the Art Division. Some of the prints were reproduced in Pictorialism in California (1994) (see Related Material).