Heritage Enhances Resilience?: The Solomon Butcher History Project of Custer County, Nebraska

Summary

Solomon Butcher was a citizen photographer smitten with what he referred to as the "history project," to photodocument the citizens of Custer County, Nebraska as the frontier receded further west. From 1886-1892, he imaged perhaps one third of the occupants, staging them in front of occupied or recently abandoned sod houses and making them party to his commemoration of a constructed pioneer heritage. When severe droughts hit in the mid-1890s, did this shared pioneer "can-do" heritage sustain Custer County residents? I report on a comparative analysis addressing this question.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20886