An Index? An Inventory?  Tell Me More!While processing a series of photographs from the Angeles

An Index? An Inventory?  Tell Me More!

While processing a series of photographs from the Angeles National Forest, our volunteer Sara discovered many amazing items: indexes to the images with short narrative descriptions of each.  While this may not seem very important, our unit has processed thousands of photographs in the past with little or no context for them. The result is hours in researching the background of the images using the little information that was provided when the records were transferred to us.

Without the indexes to this set of photographs, we could tell that they were images of areas burned in wildfires, as well as damages caused by storms and flooding in the burn areas.  However, we would not have precise information such as geographic locations and names, dates the images were taken, or names of individuals involved.

Today, we would like to share with you a very small portion of this collection.  Included is one index or “Photographic Record” and some of the images it references.  These images were captured a few months after the August, 1951 Cherry Canyon Fire which burned thousands of acres in and around the Saugus Ranger District of the Angeles National Forest.  These images capture storm damage caused to structures and landscape in the areas burned in that fire.

We hope you enjoy these images as much as we have.  Keep an eye on the National Archives Catalog as a description of this series of photographs will be there in the near future.

For more information about the Angeles National Forest, visit this site.