Inspired by "The Way We Worked," an exhibition created by the National Archives and part of Museum on Main Street, and a collaboration between the Smithsonian Institution and the Colorado Humanities, it seemed appropriate that the Western History Department's Digital Collections should throw our hat into the ring, with a few of our many, many wonderful photographs of working life in Colorado and the West. See some selected images in this gallery, and then explore our online collections for a seemingly endless trove of photographs of fields, factories and machinery, and the men and women who work them.
Canning fruit for hot lunch project
[between 1938 and 1943?]
Construction scene laying pipe
[between 1904 and 1915?]
Butchers
1917?
Cowboy working in Denver Stock Yards
1976 October 26
Yule quarry - crane and power house facilities of the Yule Marble Co. near the head of Yule Creek, south of Marble, Colorado
[between 1913 and 1917]
Diamond drilling in Camp Bird mine, 1 mile underground
[between 1880 and 1890?]
Dry cleaning plant
[between 1920 and 1930?]
Emily Griffith Opportunity School ceiling construction
circa 1945
Emily Griffith Opportunity School radio repair class
1949 May
Fire hydrant cleaning
1939 December 30
Group of miners working No. 6 below Hunker
1899
Hart's Corner employees
1933
Men working on horse
[1901?]
Philnor Pharmacy Soda Jerk
Undated
Printing
[1914]
Printing
1914
Production area for durable treads
1914
Removing the sacks of trash
[between 1890 and 1910?]
Toll switchboard (4th floor) - 1421 Champa
1922
Leadville Hospital, Leadville, Colo
1954 August
Heckethorn line
1952 July 31
We'wha weaving belt
[between 1880 and 1890?]
A good illustration of the use of tin cans and pressure cookers on a small canning unit
[between 1940 and 1950?]
London Mine & mill, 1941
1941
London Mine, women workers
1941
Nurse with GI in hospital, Italy
[1945]
Fruit packing on B.F. Wests Ranch, Palisade, Colo., Colo. Midland Ry.
[1907?]
Getting ready to harvest sugar beets
[between 1890 and 1910?]
Agriculture, vegetable gardening, peas, La Jara, Colorado 1942
Picking potatoes : washing & packing 1920's
[between 1920 and 1930?]
Stover Candy factory
1932 July 24
Centrifugal machine, Brighton, Colo, sugar beet factory
DTC machine shop
[1910?]
Colorado sugar beets
[between 1910 and 1927]
Ribbons of gold under slanting ribbons of sunshine, the metamorphosis of steel wire is completed
[between 1950 and 1970?]