Have You Heard Of Lora Webb Nichols, Wyoming’s First Blogger?

Before I began my radio career I was a blogger (and technically I still am).

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For those of you that don't know what a blogger is, it's someone who writes posts for a regularly updated website that is typically run by an individual or small group. The posts (or articles) are usually written in an informal or conversational style.

In recent years this same style of writing has transferred over to social media sites like Instagram where the focus is equally split between the pictures and the written stories that go along with them.

When I came across this article about Lora Webb Nichols on Twitter I was instantly intrigued and puzzled that I had never heard of her.

After all, I am a total Wyoming history nerd  buff, especially when it comes to the history of Wyoming women.

I did a bit more digging and came across a whole website dedicated to Nichols, and then found the University of Wyoming archive that holds more than 20,000 of her pictures...yup she took more than 20,000 pictures.

According to LoraWebbNichols.org "Lora Webb Nichols (1883-1962) created and collected approximately 24,000 negatives over the course of her lifetime in the mining town of Encampment, Wyoming. The images chronicle the domestic, social, and economic aspects of the sparsely populated frontier of south-central Wyoming."

In short, she was Wyoming's first blogger...way before it was popular.

I spent hours looking through the archives of her photos, and while it was hard to pick my favorites, I put together a gallery showing some of her work that I found the most beautiful and fascinating.

Aren't those pictures amazing?

If you'd like to look at her full catalog of pictures (trust me, it's worth your time) you can find it by following this link.