Southwestern Ruins, Villages, Pueblos, and Missions, 1846-1940

This collection consists of 865 colored and black and white glass slides of New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona Native American ruins, pueblos, missions, artifacts, as well as general landscapes of the surroundings and portraits of individual residents. A large number of the slides are attributed to H.S. Poley, but it is not clear how many or which ones in particular are his work. The general category, "Missions of New Mexico," name him as a photographer on the index of Box A, but his name is not mentioned elsewhere in the collection.

Most of the slides are not dated, but those that are indicate years and occasionally, months, from the late 1880s to the 1930s. These dates are noted on the index in the top of each slide box. There are nine boxes in all with spaces for 100 slides each.

In November, 1974, Andrew Taylor, a Colorado Springs photographer, made black and white negatives, contact sheets and work prints of the collection. These are numbered according to his own system of organizing the images and are stored in an archival box with the collection.