GOLDEN AGE OF RAILROAD TRAVEL

Montana Roundup. Northern Pacific, Northcoast Limited Poster Promoting Montana. Circa 1929

Photograph by Jessamine Spear Johnson.

During the 1920s, Jessamine Spear Johnson took to the Montana range with her camera.  Out among the Hereford cattle, the picturesque cowboys, and the fantastical Cheyenne and Crow tribes she found her calling through capturing the evolving West. 

From the teens through the early 1950’s, she photographed bucking broncos, stark snowy landscapes budding prairie flowers, her Crow and Cheyenne neighbors, roundups and rodeos.  Side by side with her cowboy husband and seven venturesome children, this remarkable woman captured the unchanging spirit of the rural west.

 Johnson's parents founded Montana's Spear-O-Wigwam ranch, which is renowned as the location where Ernest Hemmingway completed A Farewell to Arms in 1929, and where Jessamine lived.

 On October 23, 1929, she took the photo that is the subject of this poster at a roundup at the nearby X4 Ranch. The photo evokes the American West with the cattle front and center, the cowboys gathering the herd in the distance, and the pine covered hills in the background.

 Soon after taking the photograph, she sold the image to the Northern Pacific Railroad for a travel poster.  Jessamine hand tinted the black and white photograph with colored oil pens before it was reproduced as a poster.  

 An Original Vintage Poster which hangs in the Buffalo River library, has been archivally scanned and enhanced. We offer this Museum Quality Giclée Reproduction Print.

$75.00
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Heritage Prints preserves America's visual history through museum-quality reproductions of rare historical prints. We carefully restore and reproduce prints from the historic Buffalo River Library collection and other prestigious institutions, maintaining their authentic character while making them accessible to contemporary homes.

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