San Francisco

Howard Clinton Tibbitts (1863-1937) was a San Francisco based photographer who primarily worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad. He photographed the American West, Canada, and Mexico, documenting landscapes, towns, agriculture, parks, and other local scenes to help promote railroad passenger travel. His work was used in the railroad's magazine SUNSET, starting with first publication in 1898. Tibbitts' images are in the collections of the University of California's Bancroft Library, the California State Railroad Museum, the California Historical Society, and many other institutions. This negative comes from a privately held archive of his work in storage since the early 1970's. Tibbitts was one of the official photographers of the 1915 Pan-Pacific Exposition.