CUL Digital Collections Update: August 2014

In August 2014, CUL uploaded 330 items into our CUL Digital Collections web site. CUL now has approximately 39,340 published items.

Highlights include:

Oil fields in Mexico, an album entitled “Photographs: Mexico I” containing 180 photographs of oil fields and camps owned by the Mexican Petroleum Company and the Huestaco Oil Company. Depicted are Ebano, Casiano, and Cerro Azul, along with Pearson’s Potrero and Dos Bocas wells. Also included are views of oil company executives and employees, asphalt production, the countryside, rivers, and Mexico City.
Both the complete album and the individual photographs in high resolution are available.

18 Mexico oil-related items from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Part of the Everette Lee DeGolyer Sr. Papers, these items include 7 maps, 6 pamphlets or leaflets, and 5 clippings from journals that are part of a scrapbook held by Mr. DeGolyer. The maps include Chihuahua Oil Lands (ca. 1910-1929); Theoretical Section Through Alazan Nos 2 & 3, Potrero del Llano No 31 & 5 and Tumbadero No 4 (1912); Section Tanhuijo Wells (ca. 1910-1913); Reconnaissance Geologic and Topographic Map of Hacienda Llano Grande (1910); Reconnaissance Geologic and Topographic Map of Hacienda Tierra Amarilla (1910); Potrero Oil Field Well Location Sheet (1910); and General Plan of the Tampico Region, Mexico (1913). Pamphlets/leaflets include Facts Relative to the Existence of Oil in Mexico (1910), Pearson contra Pierce en la “Guerra Petrolifera Mexicana.” (ca. 1910), La Cuestion Petrolera ante la Camara de Diputados (1914), Test for Oil in Rocks (1915), The Geology of Cape Colony, Excerpt] (1909), and The History of Mining in Mexico and Its Economic Development (1916). Clippings include Federal Leasing of Oil Lands (1913), The Derivation of Oil-Well Logs (1913), Bitumen and Oil Rocks (1904), Geological Notes on West Coast of Mexico (1910), and [Noticia historica de la Riqueza minera de Mexico y de su actual Estado de Explotacion] (1884).

San Xavier Church, Tucson, Arizona, 1882, a print from the book “From river to sea: a tourist’s and miner’s guide from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean via Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, and California” by Gleed.

3 prints, 1869, from “Adventures in the Apache country: a tour through Arizona and Sonora, with notes on the silver regions of Nevada” by Browne. Two of the images depict Tucson, Arizona and the San Xavier mission in Tuscon, and the third depicts the Casas Grandes Ruins National Monument in Coolidge, Arizona.

Olive Oatman, 1857, a portrait print of former North American Indian captive, Olive Oatman, from the book “Captivity of the Oatman girls: being an interesting narrative of life among the Apache and Mohave Indians” by the Reverend Royal B. Stratton.

City of Tucson, 1884, a lithograph showing a cityscape view of Tuscon, Arizona, from “The resources of Arizona. Its mineral, farming, grazing and timber lands; its history, climate, productions, civil and military government, pre-historic ruins, early missionaries, Indian tribes, pioneer days, etc., etc.”

Ruins of Pecos – Astek Church, 1848, a lithograph depicting a mission church in the ruins of Pecos Pueblo.

5 chromolithographs, ca. 1855-1860, from “Reports of explorations and surveys, to ascertain the most practicable and economical route for a railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean.” Two of the images depict the Rio Colorado and various North American Indians on its banks, a third depicts the Zuni Pueblo and surrounding mesas, and the last two depict members of two separate North American Indian tribes, the Navajo and the Mojave.

5 lithographs, including 1 chromolithograph portrait of three Mojave Indians and 4 lithographs documenting the exploration up the Colorado River and through the Grand Canyon, all taken from “Report upon the Colorado River of the West, explored in 1857 and 1858”.

Box 1 of the Henry Potter Iron Art Studio, which includes 109 shop drawings that were uploaded into a new digital collection for the Bywaters Special Collections. The Henry Potter Iron Art Studio collection contains some 1,700 shop sketches and accompanying invoices from Potter Metal Studios in Dallas, which fashioned lighting fixtures, furniture, and other items, primarily in iron, for North Texas businesses, private residences, and institutions (e.g., Dallas Little Theatre, SMU, Highland Park Shopping Village, Highland Park United Methodist Church, and Highland Park Presbyterian Church) from the 1930s through the 1960s.