About This Blog
J.W. (“Will”) Bledsoe was a commercial photographer who was active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mostly in California, but also in Oregon and Nevada, with his work roughly spanning 1890 to 1930. The quality of his images speaks for itself; some of them are spectacular, high-resolution images taken on large glass plates that match the quality of the best modern images. He also took remarkable panoramic photos, including one in the holdings of the Library of Congress that shows Teddy Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet, shot from near the top of Twin Peaks in San Francisco in May 1908. Another noteworthy aspect of Bledsoe’s work is his wilderness photography. He is credited with the first ascent of Birch Mountain in the eastern Sierra Nevada, and he was among the first photographers to document much of that mountain range. His work included extensive contracts with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and they have a collection of glass plates that are currently in the University of Southern California library.
Unfortunately, because Bledsoe was a commercial photographer he did not retain copyright to most of his images, and because his work is not widely known much of it has been scattered.
The primary goal of this blog is to provide a single location where J.W. Bledsoe’s oeuvre can be collected, collated, and analyzed.
If you have digital copies of any of Bledsoe’s photos, feel free to contact me at charles.delwiche@gmail.com; depending upon your wishes I can add you as a contributor to the blog, or if you would prefer to simply send me a scan of the image(s) I will be happy to post them. If you have hardcopy images you want to get rid of, I would love to have them.
I am a descendant of Bledsoe (his great-grandson), and the blog will also include some family photos and probably a few unattributed photos from the same era.
JW Bledsoe’s work is not to be confused with that of the currently active photographer Shanell Bledsoe, whose blog is here: http://www.bledsoephoto.com/, or R & M Bledsoe Photography, East Texas Wedding Photographers, whose website is here: http://randmbledsoephoto.com.
2016-02-10 at 2:36 am
I’ve been searching for old photographs by Bledsoe during the time he had a studio in Traver, CA. This would include images of giant sequoias and probably logging photos from the Converse Basin area. So far the only image I’ve seen during this time period is the one you have here (of the Boole Tree). There’s got to be more out there!!
I think that Bledsoe started in Traver prior to 1890… but I’d have to dig for the information again, to say for sure.
2016-02-10 at 3:00 am
I put up a post with a couple that are in the USC collection. These are dated 1886/1887 (according to the USC database). One of my incentives for creating this blog is to try to pull together information on more of his images. As you say, I’m sure there are more out there. I’m a little surprised that the Boole Tree photo is later than those of Independence — the Independence shots already had the sharpness that characterized his later photos, while the Boole Tree is not particularly crisp, and has a lot of vignetting.
2016-02-10 at 4:19 am
Do you know if Bledsoe and photographer C.C. Curtis shared a studio in Traver?
There’s one map of Traver’s downtown (for the years 1886-1889) which list the studio as “Curtis and Bledsoe Photograph Gallery”, but I haven’t seen any other indication that they shared a studio.
It is interesting though, since both photographers took an interest in the giant sequoias of the Converse Basin area.
2016-02-10 at 11:52 pm
I was contacted some years ago by a fellow by the name of Ken Zech who raised the same possibility. He had some expertise with that map, and felt that both explanations — they shared a studio or occupied it sequentially — were equally likely. There are very few people still living who remember Bledsoe, and none who would have had direct knowledge of that studio, but I’ll keep my eye out for evidence of any kind of collaboration with C.C. Curtis.
2016-02-21 at 10:08 pm
Peter, I’ve posted another photo from the Traver days for you. Do you have any idea when he left Traver? I know he was in Bend, Oregon by the early years of the 20th Century.
2016-03-26 at 2:32 pm
Unfortunately, I have no Idea when Bledsoe left Traver. I know that Curtis left Traver around 1887, and soon moved his base of operations to Hanford. Curtis was also a member of the Kaweah Colony, for a short period.
Have you ever seen any studio portraits done by Bledsoe in Traver? I have one photo apparently from Curtis’s Traver studio, during this period, but it lacks any photographer ID. I wonder if it’s possible that Bledsoe was the photographer? Most likely this photo was taken before September 1886.
2016-03-26 at 7:42 pm
I haven’t yet identified any studio work from the Traver period, but I’m pretty sure it exists. I know that he did do a fair bit of portraiture, but of course most of those portraits would be in the hands of the family the portrait was shot for. He did start labeling his photographs fairly early, but his portraits seem not to be labeled as often as his landscape work.
2018-08-01 at 7:20 am
I still haven’t found any new Bledsoe photos. But I found a newspaper article about J. W.
It’s from the Visalia Weekly Delta, dated 6/3/1909. I’ve placed it on a sub-page of my blog. I had to copy it in 3 sections, but the whole article is there:
https://oldtularecopics.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_1.html
2020-06-15 at 12:01 am
I recently purchased a JW Bledsoe studio portrait, with his Traver ID stamp. Got it from someone who sells photos of the Tulare County area, professionally. He had two from the studio, they were a bit pricey so I only got just the one… I really wanted it for my collection!
They are the only two Bledsoe’s Traver studio portraits that I’ve seen so far. Unfortunately, I have no idea who the woman in the image is.
I posted it on my blog today, here: https://oldtularecopics.blogspot.com/2020/06/
2020-06-15 at 6:39 pm
Thanks! I thought I had a copy of that photo, but I can’t find it. I’ll keep looking.
2021-02-14 at 7:33 am
I just picked up a framed panoramic of the Alabama Hills in Eastern Sierras. I used to live in the area and actually learned how to drive as a kid driving on dirt roads out there which inspired to buy it when i saw it at an estate sale.
2021-02-14 at 5:07 pm
Congratulations! I’d love to see the image, and if you can get a good shot of it and would be willing to allow me to post it here, I’d like to do that as well. How big is it? The large panorama I have is over 15 inches tall and about ten feet long, but most of his panoramas that I have seen are about 9 inches tall and four feet long. Most, if not all, of his panoramas were taken with Cirkut cameras. Among other things, there is a distinctive tendency for the image to go slightly in and out of focus along the length of the panorama, which I believe has to do with how the image was printed (as a contact print).
2022-08-21 at 11:24 pm
Hello Charles
My son is Dan Bledsoe, great grandson of William Bledsoe. I am very interested in finding copies of William Bledsoe’s work, particularly the one with the old Sequoia tree and all the lumbermen. Can you assist me?
Thank you
Connie Benton Bledsoe
2022-08-22 at 1:25 am
Hi Connie – That means we are related, somehow. I’m also a great-grandson of JW Bledsoe, so I guess that means that
Dan and I are second cousins. Am I correct in understanding that you married into the family? Which one of JW and Martha Alice’s children is Dan descended from? I know Danna Bledsoe a bit — she was with me when I took those photos of the Francisquito Canon power plant.
I’m afraid that the only JWB photo I own (other than family album shots) is that monumental panorama taken in Sequoia National park in 1907. I do have several high quality reproductions, mostly from the LA Department of Water and Power collection. The blog is all about my efforts to find additional JWB photos; I’m interested in photography, and knew that he was a professional photographer, but until 25 years or so ago had never seen any of his photos, so I started searching around trying to find them, and eventually started to maintain the blog as a kind of an aid to memory.
I presume you mean this photo? https://blog.umd.edu/bledsoe/2016/01/13/sequoiadendron-giganteum-in-1890/
The library entry is here: https://calisphere.org/item/ark:/13030/kt6t1nc71k/
and on that page it says “To obtain a digital copy of the original photograph, please contact Kings County Library at 401 N. Douty Street, Hanford, CA 93230, telephone: 559-582-0261.” I may try to telephone them, because I would love to have a higher-quality digital file; it would also give me an opportunity to ask them if they have any other images in their collection.
2023-01-29 at 9:24 pm
I just noticed two old Bledsoe (Traver studio) photos on the “Alta District Historical Society in Dinuba, CA” facebook group. I have never seen these images before. https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064581106908
One photo is described as the site of Sequoia Lake, before the lake was there. That lake was created to provide the water needed for a logging flume which began use by the middle of 1890… so the photo would have been prior to that.
2023-01-30 at 3:36 am
Thank you! These are great photos, probably from the late 1880s. I’ll make a posting on the Facebook page and see if they have any others.
2023-07-06 at 4:28 am
Thank you for posting these pictures of JW Bledsoe.
He was my great grandfather. My mind m Susan and Uncle Forrest Bledsoe are still around.
Our family may have copies of photos of the Sequoia trees you might be looking for.
I found this blog interesting. Thank you.
2023-09-19 at 4:20 pm
I thought I replied to you when this message came in, but the dashboard is showing it as if I never replied. I’ll send a separate message via email, but we are second cousins. I know the name Forrest Bledsoe, please give him and Susan my regards. If you find any of those old photos and can snap a shot of them I’d love to see them!
2023-09-19 at 4:08 pm
Hi! We were recently cleaning out my parent’s garage. There was a framed photo of a Yucca tree that always had hung in my father’s workshop, and I believe in my grandfather’s workshop before his. I have always loved this photo and for some reason it just ended up in a corner, so I saved it and decided to hang it in our home. Yesterday, I reframed it, due to the original frame having been damaged by water. I discovered the stamp of “J.W. Bledsoe Photographer” on the back of the photo along with an address. Out of curiosity, I decided to google him and found your blog. It makes this photo even more special to find out the history of the photographer. Thank you!
2023-09-19 at 4:18 pm
That’s great! I know there are a bunch of his photos lurking out there, and finding them was one of the motivations for creating the blog. If you wouldn’t mind having me post it on here, please snap a shot of the photo and I’ll share it. Enjoy!
2023-12-27 at 1:35 am
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sDo910XqwJGlbl-yiW-Me3HYScE50yCV/view?usp=drivesdk
2023-12-27 at 2:12 am
That is a very interesting photo! It is a well-known photo of William Mulholland, and I have a copy of it that was given to me by the LADWP, signed by one of Mulholland’s descendants, but your copy has a much broader field of view than any version I have seen before. The version I have is similar to this one: https://blog.umd.edu/bledsoe/category/uncategorized/
Searching the web I see a few versions, but none with anything like as wide a field of view as this one. Do you have the original? Is it okay with you if I post this image to the blog? It will make an interesting comparison to the more cropped version.
2024-01-22 at 2:20 am
I have been compiling a listing of Forest Service maps from 1892 to 1975. The California District of the Forest Service (Now the Pacific Southwest Region) used a Bledsoe photograph for the cover of its 1926 folded forest visitor map of the Inyo National Forest. The caption of the photograph, attributed to “Bledsoe,” was
“Big Pine Creek Lake, Inyo National Forest” I always try to find the full name of cartographers and artists on Forest Service maps, so was happy to find your Blog so I could do some research in Ancestry and found his first name was James, so James W. Bledsoe “Will” Thanks.
Peter Stark
starkpls@gmail.com