Byron Harmon (1876-1947) was an American photographer from Tacoma, Washington, who settled in Banff, Alberta.
Mr. Harmon’s stated ambition was to photograph every major peak and glacier in the Rocky Mountains, in as many moods (i.e. different weather and ambient lighting conditions) as possible.
The majority of Harmon’s photographs were taken between 1906 and 1934, shot with a 5×7 view camera with cellulose-nitrate negatives (glass plates being both too heavy and too fragile for mountaineering use). Mr. Harmon had also made several films during his mountaineering expeditions, but most the footage has since been lost or destroyed.
The Three Sisters (Big Sister, Middle Sister and Little Sister) near Canmore, AB.
Mt. Assiniboine (dubbed "The Matternhorn of North America"), a part of the Southern Continental Range of the Canadian Rockies.
Camp on Moraine Lake. Valley of the Ten Peaks (also portrayed on the back of the old Canadian twenty-dollar bill) appears in background.
Banff Avenue in Winter. Cascade Mountain appears in background.
An encampment of the Lyärhe Nakoda nation (a.k.a. Stoney Indians).
Group of Nakoda on horseback.
Swimming pool of the Chateau Lake Louise.
Bow Lake (elev. 1,920m), east of the Waputik Range.
Hungabee Mountain, at the head of Paradise Valley. Hungabee is a Nakoda word meaning "chieftain".
Pool of the Government Bath House, Banff, Alberta.
See more of Byron Harmon’s photographs and postcard images here.
More biographical details about Byron Harmon here, from the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies.
Chris is most often found flying a desk, but he delights in studying the Golden Age of Aviation (1919-1939). He admires all the pioneering men and women who navigated the skies with nothing more sophisticated than a map, compass and sextant—and the conviction that there was no place they could not reach.
