 |
|
||
 |
|||
|
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
The Mountaineers CollectionThe Mountaineers is an outdoor club, founded in 1906, to promote the discovery, conservation and documentation of the "mountains, forests and watercourses of the Pacific Northwest". The Mountaineers Club constitution states that the object of the organization is: "to gather into permanent form the history and traditions of this region; to preserve, by protective legislation or otherwise, the natural beauty of the Northwest Coast of America; to make frequent or periodical expeditions into these regions in fulfillment of the above purposes". Henry Landes, first president of the Mountaineers described the mission of the club as: "rendering a public service in the battle to preserve our natural scenery from wanton destruction, and yet make our spots of supremest beauty accessible to the largest number of mountain lovers." One of the founding members was Asahel Curtis, a renowned Northwest photographer. In 1906, Curtis, together with W. Montelius Price and Henry Landes (then UW Dean of Geology), formulated the idea to create a new Northwest mountaineering club. A meeting was held at the residence of Dr. and Mrs. E.S. Stevens, in part for the purpose of arranging a welcome for Dr. Frederick A. Cook and party on their return from the first successful ascent of Mt. McKinley. After much subsequent discussion, a constitution for the new club was drafted in 1907. At the first meeting on January 18, 1907, the question of annual and local outings was discussed, and a splendid collection of photographs of Mt. Baker taken by Asahel Curtis was shown. The second meeting in February featured a lecture, accompanied by stereoscopic views illustrating the Harriman Expedition to Alaska by Prof. Trevor Kincaid. The first local outing took place at Fort Lawton and the West Point Lighthouse. There were 151 initial charter members. Over half of the members were women; four of the women charter members were physicians. Women mountaineers constituted an important contributing membership to the club and are very prominent in many of the early photographs of the Mountaineers outings. Among the other outstanding members was Edmond Meany who in 1908 took over the leadership of the Mountaineers. He presided over the organization for 27 years. Other early members included Erastus Brainard, Prof. Trevor Kincaid, Laurence D. Lindsley, Prof. F. M. Padelford, Prof. Milnor Roberts, and Arthur C. Warner. The Mountaineers Club banded together members of the community and served to advertise the Northwest's love for the natural beauty of its environment, encouraging safe mountaineering techniques and promoting environmental reforms. Headquartered in Seattle, they eventually created branches in five other Washington cities. They also introduced alpine skiing to the area. The Mountaineers organization also authored a basic text on mountaineering entitled "Freedom of the Hills". These albums depict some of the first major expeditions of the Mountaineers including the first major outing to Mt. Olympus in 1907. Although many of the imagesdocument outings to the Olympic Peninsula, some representative albums reflect the Mountaineers interest in Mt. Rainer and the Cascade Mountains. About the DatabaseThe Mountaineers Collection database was produced partially by funding from the Olympic Peninsula Virtual Community Museum project . The information for the collection was researched and prepared by the grant staff, UW Libraries Special Collections and Cataloging staff in 2004-5. All the photographs from the selected albums were included in this database. In addition, textual selections from the Mountaineers Bulletin describing the outings were also scanned and included in the database. The images and text were scanned in grayscale using Microtek scanners and saved in .jpg format. Some manipulation of the images was done to present the clearest possible digital image. The scanned images were then linked with descriptive data using the UW Contentdm program. The original collection resides in the UW Libraries Special Collections Division as the Mountaineers Collection no. 341. |
Explore CollectionBrowse Subjects (LCTGM) Browse Subjects (LCSH) Search Collection: More Information"Mountaineering" essay by E.S. Meany Sample Searches:
Online Exhibit |
