In 1969, Glanville Smith donated an ambrotype photo of a mining camp he inherited from his grandfather to The Montana Historical Society labeled: “French Gulch, Aug. 23, 1862.”

The historical society previously believed the photo of “French Gulch” to be one of the oldest, if not the oldest, in their collection. The photo remained at the historical society for 55 years, until archivists realized this summer the photo wasn’t even of Montana. 

It was taken in Breckenridge. 

On July 23, it made its way back to where it was actually taken thanks to a photo archivist who wasn’t satisfied with the bare-bones history behind the photo.

It all started when Montana Historical Society photo archives manager Jeff Malcomson was unable to find the location of the photo.

The “French Gulch” in the photo didn’t match two different Montana French Gulch locations he compared it to. After that, he decided to broaden the scope of his search outside Montana. 

A graduate of Colorado State University, Malcomson thought to start looking in Colorado. Once he started to more closely examine the Ten Mile Range, he began to match the peaks to those in the 1862 photo. 

After verifying it was a photo of Breckenridge, he reached out to Breckenridge History’s archivist Kris Ann Knish. Soon, the photo was on its way back home.

Governing historical society boards, archival policies and transporting archival material, particularly ones like ambrotype photos that can contain glass, can make acquiring a piece like this tricky. 

Neither historical society was willing to gamble with this photo, so it ended up being hand delivered by two former staff members of the Montana Historical Society, Kirby Lambert and Becca Kohl. 

Breckenridge History’s Susan Gilmore likened the arrival of the ambrotype to Christmas for their staff.  

“We are all preservation geeks, so to have this new old piece of our history unlocked and be able to dive down into all the mystery around it is just such a cool opportunity,” she said. 

While the mystery of where the photo was taken has been solved, the mystery of who took it remains.

Yes, the photo was in the hands of Smith’s grandfather, John G. Gill, but no one has nailed down if he was the one who took it.

Now with the photo in hand, Breckenridge History’s next step is figuring out who took it, a step Gilmore said is both fun and infuriating.

She said Smith relayed quite a bit of information about his grandfather, yet he seemingly didn’t know his grandfather was ever even in Colorado. It is unknown whether Gill was a miner who ended up with the photo somehow, a photographer, or both while in Breckenridge.

She said during the process of verifying that a mining camp was intact at the time of the photo, Knish found there was a photographer in a nearby, now ghost town, Lincoln City, and there’s a possibility that person could be the photographer. 

“We are really just trying to figure out everything we can about when and how this would have been created,” Gilmore said, noting the process involves a lot of digging into archival collections and historic newspapers.