 Los Alamos Ranch School Fir Patrol, 1940, by T. Harmon Parkhurst. Courtesy/LAHS Photo Archive, Parkhurst Collection By SHARON SNYDER
Los Alamos Historical Society As noted in the book Los Alamos: The Ranch School Years, “photography played an important role in advertising and promoting Los Alamos” from its early years to the closing in 1945, but photography also made a huge contribution to historians who have worked to document the 25 years of the school’s history. There are copious pictures of everyday life at the school, from classrooms to sleeping porches to trail rides and camping in the Jemez. A few photos are like the family vacation pictures of a memorable moment not quite in focus—but most are not. Many are works of art and composed beautifully, sharp and framed perfectly through the lens. The reason for that, and for our good fortune all these years later, is that LARS Director A.J. Connell had the foresight to see the importance of a good photographic record and to hire two of the best photographers in the West to help with that record—T. Harmon Parkhurst and Laura Gilpin.
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 Commencement in Graduation Canyon, 1921 (Courtesy of Los Alamos Historical Society Archive) By Sharon Snyder
Los Alamos Historical Society In this time of disrupted events, including the graduation ceremony for the Los Alamos High School Class of 2020, I chose to do this column on Graduation Canyon to coincide with a time when many teens in our town had looked forward to wearing caps and gowns to their ceremony. Fate handed them a disappointment, but commencement is more than the celebration. The first graduations on the Pajarito Plateau were held in the early 1920s as the Los Alamos Ranch School began to send some of its young men off to college. Not all of the boys who came to the school had intentions of graduating here. Some families sent their sons for a year or two of “toughening up” to gain stamina, in some cases because the boys had been ill and needed the fresh mountain air and exercise to improve their health. The ranch school opened in 1917, and in 1921 it held its first graduation for two boys—Bill Rose of Santa Fe and Wallace Kieselhorst of St. Louis.  Camp Hamilton as it looked circa 1951. Courtesy/Paul Bombardt By SHARON SNYDER
Los Alamos Historical Society Two weeks ago I wrote about Camp May, the getaway for senior boys at the Los Alamos Ranch School (LARS), but there was also another camp, one primarily used by the younger boys. Camp Hamilton has a longer, more detailed history. In 1918, the year after the Ranch School was founded, a man known only as F. Coomer leased a bit of land from the U.S. Forest Service to build a two-room log cabin in Pueblo Canyon east of the Otowi Pueblo site. Coomer was the general manager of the Rocky Mountain Camp Company, and he guided tours out of Santa Fe into Pueblo Canyon to an area he called Tent Cities of the Rockies. He showed his guests the rock-capped, cone-shaped mounds of tuff scattered through the area. |
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The Los Alamos Historical Society preserves, promotes, and communicates the remarkable history and inspiring stories of Los Alamos and its people for our community, for the global audience, and for future generations.
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