About the Collection

Our on-line database contains a selection of historic photographs from the collections of the Denver Public Library Western History/Genealogy Department and the Colorado Historical Society. These collections, which contain more than one million items, document the history of Colorado and the American West. Our on-line database contains some 100,000 images and catalog records of North American Indians, pioneers, railroads, mining, Denver and Colorado towns, city, farm, and ranch life, recreation, scenery, news events, and numerous other subjects and states.

Notable collections depict the daily lives of the Tenth Mountain Division ski troops and Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, the Clarence Moreledge photographs at Wounded Knee, and the Charles S. Lillybridge collection which depicts daily life in Denver around the turn of the century. Click here to see a list of photographers and subjects.

To see some of our most-requested images, visit our photoswest.org Classics section.

In addition to the historic photographs found at this site, there are about 1000 images of artifacts from the Colorado Historical Society and the Denver Art Museum. Included are pottery, paintings, textiles, and sculpture.

The Denver Public Library has thousands of photographs that are not yet online. We have posted subject heading lists for loose photos from our Western States, Biography, General and Railroad collections. To find out more about these photographs, please email us at photosales@denver.lib.co.us, or call (720) 865-1818.

You can explore various subjects and themes in Western History by visiting exhibits in our photo galleries, or, you can access the entire database through our Search Page.

You can return to the photography collection home page from any location. Click on either the star icon that appears in the left margin or "home" that appears on the bottom of each page. Our link color is red and our visited link color is purple.

Purchasing Prints

You can purchase high resolution photographic prints of the images that you see on our web site. This service makes it easy for you to enjoy the history of the American West and take a bit home, too.

To order prints, and for information on prices and procedures, click on Sales. If you have any questions, e-mail our Photo Sales Department or call (720) 865-1818.

We are now offering three different sets of postcards featuring images from our collections. Find out more here.

Viewing High Resolution Images

If you visit the Denver Public Library, you can use one of our public workstations to access high resolution versions of the images on this site. These workstations are in the Western History / Genealogy Department, on Level 5 of the Central Library. You can zoom, pan and change contrast of the images. For more about the resolution of our images, view this demonstration.

There are also high resolution workstations at the Denver Art Museum and the Colorado History Museum.

Calibrating Your Monitor

You may need to adjust your monitor for best viewing of the photographs in this digital collection. Here are instructions on adjusting your monitor for optimal viewing.

Project Funding

This project is supported by grants from the Boettcher Foundation; Bruce and Virginia Rockwell; the National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent federal agency, and the Telecommunications and Information Infrastructure Assistance Program, National Telecommunications and Information Administration, U. S. Department of Commerce. This project was paid for in part by a State Historical Fund grant from the Colorado Historical Society. This project was awarded a grant in the Library of Congress/Ameritech competition to provide access to the Denver Public Library's photographs of North American Indians and mining as part of the Library of Congress's National Digital Library American Memory Project.