Camp Mabry Prewar Texas Photo Archive of 308 photographs with extensive Mexico Travel, 1936 to 1937

Camp Mabry Texas and Mexico

Photograph

Camp Mabry and Texas personal photo album documenting prewar military camps, domestic and civic life in Austin and San Antonio, Arkansas political rally activity, and Mexico in 1936 and 1937, with direct evidence of how one compiler moved between troop grounds, private homes, city streets, and cross border travel before the Second World War. Handwritten captions place the sequence at Bull Creek Road, Breckenridge Park, Dr. Davis’s home in San Antonio, the University of Texas, Camp Mabry, Pulaski political sites, Mexico City, and the pyramids and ruins visited on the Mexico trip. The Camp Mabry section shows troop buildings, motor transport, horses, trench mortar practice, parade formations, and guard changes within the daily structure of a Texas military post in the late Depression period.

Photo archive of 308 silver gelatin photographs and 1 photographic negative, most measuring approximately 4 x 3 inches, with several larger snapshot prints laid into the album,
Texas, Arkansas, and Mexico, 1936 to 1937. Contemporary white ink captions identify places, dates, and subjects throughout, including “Bull Creek Road / December 1936,” “Bordeaux Home Thanksgiving November 1936,” “Breckenridge Park, S.A., 1937,” “Dr. Davis’s Home in San Antonio May 1937,” “Ark. Stage During Political Rally,” “Pulaski Office 1936 Aug,” “State Capitol,” “Congress Ave.,” “Law Bldg. Univ. Tex,” “Motor Transport Units,” “Troop Bldg.,” “Saddle Room,” “Trench Mortar,” “Troop Horses,” “Parade,” “Changing the Guards,” “Mexico City,” “El Gran Catedral,” “Indian Ruins,” “Big Pyramid,” and “Early Ruins.” The Texas photographs include women posed beside late 1930s automobiles, garden and yard portraits at the Bordeaux home, rocky riverbank scenes at Bull Creek and Marble Falls, couples’ snapshots, and views around Austin and San Antonio. The Arkansas pages show storefronts, hotel facades, backstage and basement interiors, campaign imagery around the Arkansas Theater and Pulaski office, and men identified in caption as Ray Coley and Frank MacMahon. Camp Mabry appears in sustained sequence through barracks views, transport lines, artillery vehicles, horse trough scenes, calisthenics fields, band and baseball activity, parade grounds, and numerous named soldiers and officers including Bill Brooks, Capt. Sutton, Capt. Müller, Col. Boyd, Maj. Newgarden, Bill Connors, Brown, Luther Stone, Jimmy Sadler, and Jeff Kersey. The Mexico section extends from mountain roads and city streets to cathedral architecture and archaeological tourism, including stepped pyramids, broad stairways, summit views, and crowd scenes at the ruins.

The album documents Texas in 1936 and 1937, Texas prewar military organization and the Mexico photographs placing the compiler within a broader 1930s culture of automobile tourism and hemispheric travel. Light edge wear to the album, corner and mount wear, scattered fading and silvering to some prints, and handling wear to several laid in photographs; overall good condition. Photos from Camp Mabry act as dated records of daily troop routine at one of Texas’s principal military posts that soon assumed a wartime home-front role as headquarters of the Texas Defense Guard. The dated photographs show Camp Mabry in the years immediately preceding World War II, and the Arkansas and Mexico sections reveal how this interwar period allowed for movement, leisure, and social life in a way which would soon be restricted by the second world war.

Item #23272

Price: $850.00