Mrs. Meade’s Colorado

While working on The Silver Shawl, I did a little browsing online to try and find some pictures of Colorado around the turn of the century, where the story is set. I usually imagine the visuals of a story beforehand, sometimes basing them on things I’ve read rather than something I’ve seen, so I seldom find pictures that match up with the ideas in my mind’s eye. But this time it was different!

This is Manitou Springs, Colorado, around 1902. It looks very much as I picture my fictional town of Sour Springs—only Sour Springs is probably a little smaller.

Click to enlarge

A panorama of Denver circa 1898. All of these pictures are photochrom prints—an early colorization process that produced color images from black-and-white negatives—by the Detroit Photographic Company.

Most of these pictures are from photographs taken by William Henry Jackson, the Detroit Photographic Company’s best-known photographer. Here’s the original black-and-white photograph from which this print of Ouray, Colorado circa 1901 was produced.

I was particularly delighted to find this picture of a sunset, which, though taken from Cripple Creek around 1899, very much resembles the sunset over Denver I described in The Silver Shawl.

To see these pictures and eventually more related to the stories, visit the Pinterest board I’ve created for the Mrs. Meade Mysteries. Did I mention that there are going to be more? Yes, another adventure for Mrs. Meade is my current project.