The Acoma Indians have occupied this pueblo, 60 miles west of Albuquerque, New Mexico, for more than 900 years, making it one of the nation’s oldest, continuously-inhabited communities. When Ben Wittick visited Acoma pueblo, while working for the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad in 1883, he photographed these women balancing ollas atop their heads as they traversed the rocky path of Sky City village. Two hundred years had passed since their ancestors fought in the Pueblo Revolt in an unsuccessful attempt to throw off Spanish rule, and now the Acoma found themselves on a U.S. reservation.
The Swiss brothers, Frank and Henry Dubacher, brewed about 150 gallons of beer daily at the Bisbee Brewery they opened in the early 1880s. Their nephew, Joseph Muheim, who began working for them in 1888, owned a pet bear that he tied to a tree between the brewery building and Goar’s Garage. Legend goes that the miners who frequented the bar found it a great sport to box with the 300-pound bear. Unfortunately, as the tale goes, the bear had too much to drink one night and accidentally hanged himself with his chain after he climbed up into the tree to go to sleep.
Samuel Colt was late to the double action game; he considered the design to be unreliable. Twenty years after Colt’s patent expired in 1857, Colt attempted a small-frame revolver; the following year, 1878, the company’s large-frame double action came out, known as the Frontier Colt. In this 1880s photo, a buckskin-clad dandy sports his nickeled 1878 Frontier Colt on his hip.
– Courtesy Herb Peck Jr. Collection –
Two German-born brothers, Frank W. and George Freund, followed the track of the Union Pacific Railroad westward, including to Laramie, Wyoming Territory, where, in the photo shown here, the man on the sand mound holds a double-key percussion muzzleloader, while the man to his right holds an 1866 Winchester. By 1870, with the Union Pacific built, the brothers had opened shop in Denver, Colorado, and eventually went on to secure patents for Sharps, Remington, Colt and other big gun manufacturers.
– Courtesy Union Pacific Railroad Museum –
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please leave a comment-- or suggestions, particularly of topics and places you'd like to see covered