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Original 12.75 x 10 albumen photo print of the Fort Apache military camp in east-central Arizona by noted frontier photographer Ben Whittick, entitled below, “Fort Apache, Arizona, Jan. ‘84.” The image depicts the various homes and buildings of the U.S. Cavalry military post at Fort Apache, with a high ridge running in the backdrop. The photo is affixed to a slightly larger presentation mount. In very good to fine condition, with light scattered marks and toning, and a missing lower right corner tip. After the capture of Geronimo in 1886 and the close of the Apache Wars, the significance of this military base declined, and it was transferred to the jurisdiction of the civilian United States Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1923. The BIA established an Indian Boarding School called the Roosevelt Indian School, named after President Theodore Roosevelt.
Provenance: Martin Lane Historic & Western Americana Lifetime Collection.
George Benjamin Wittick (1845-1903) was a photographer from Pennsylvania who moved out west in 1878 to pursue frontier photography. He worked for the Atlantic and Pacific Railroads, and later established his first photography studio in Gallup, New Mexico. During his career, he photographed a variety of subjects, including the railroad, southwestern landscapes such as Canyon de Chelly, the Navajo Reservation, and Pueblo scenes; and Native peoples like the Apache, Navajo, Hopi, and Zuni. His best-known photographs were of Geronimo and Billy the Kid. In 1900, he established his last studio at Fort Wingate, where he died three years later of a rattlesnake bite, which was foretold by a Hopi priest.
