Lora Webb Nichols (1883–1962) was an American photographer and diarist.

Early life and education

Nichols was born in Boulder, Colorado. Her grandfather was Colorado Lieutenant Governor

David H. Nichols David Hopkinson Nichols (March 16, 1826 – December 17, 1900) was the eighth Lieutenant Governor of Colorado, United States, serving from 1893 to 1895 under Davis Hanson Waite. Nichols was born in Hardwick, Vermont in 1826. He served in the M ...

. She moved with her family to

Encampment, Wyoming Encampment (also known as Grand Encampment) is a town in southern Carbon County, Wyoming, United States. The population was 450 at the 2010 census. History Known also as " Grand Encampment", this town along the Colorado-Wyoming border was, a ...

Life and work

Nichols began photographing in 1899 at age 16. Lucy Davies, writing in ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was f ...

'', described her work as recording

Wyoming Wyoming () is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the southwest, and Colorado to the sou ...

's "inconsequential chores and rituals (washing, shovelling snow, braiding hair) rather than grand events. Even so, her frank, bold pictures capture the clean-cut thrill of pioneer life, of America's hugeness and scope." Around 1905, Nichols built a darkroom and worked as a photographer and a photo finisher. In 1925, she founded three businesses in Encampment: the Rocky Mountain Studio which developed film and loaned cameras; ''The Encampment Echo'' newspaper; and The Sugar Bowl, selling soda and ice cream. When cowboys and young men in the

Civilian Conservation Corps The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a voluntary government work relief program that ran from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men ages 18–25 and eventually expanded to ages 17–28. The CCC was a major part o ...

passed through town, Nichols would loan them a camera and ask them to return with photographs. These images represent about a third of her archive. In 1935, she moved to Stockton, California and worked in a children's home, eventually becoming its director. She returned to Encampment in 1956, where she died in 1962.

Personal life

She had six children.

Legacy

There are 24000 photographs in Nichols' archive, 16000 of them taken by her, held at the American Heritage Center of the

University of Wyoming The University of Wyoming (UW) is a public land-grant research university in Laramie, Wyoming. It was founded in March 1886, four years before the territory was admitted as the 44th state, and opened in September 1887. The University of Wyomin ...

. That archive also includes a manuscript for her unfinished memoir, ''I Remember: a Girl's Eye View of Early Days in the Rocky Mountains''. Her diaries and other photographs are held at Grand Encampment Museum in Encampment.

Publications

*''Encampment, Wyoming: Selections from the Lora Webb Nichols Archive 1899–1948''. Amsterdam: Fw, 2020. Edited by Nicole Jean Hill. . With essays by Nancy F. Anderson and Hill. **Amsterdam: Fw, 2021.

References

External links

*
Nichols' archive at the American Heritage Center of the University of WyomingNichols' archive at the Grand Encampment Museum
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nichols, Lora Webb 1962 deaths 1883 births 20th-century American photographers 19th-century American photographers Photographers from Colorado 20th-century American women photographers 19th-century American women photographers People from Boulder, Colorado Photographers from Wyoming People from Carbon County, Wyoming