Museum preserving old Hileman photos
An unnamed Blackfeet man and a child float in a “Buffalo boat” made from a buffalo hide. (T.J. Hileman photo/Courtesy of Northwest Montana History Museum)
A 1929 postcard from the photographer and his wife.
A child sleeps in an adult’s arms. (T.J. Hileman photo/Courtesy of Northwest Montana History Museum)
In the basement of the Northwest Montana History Museum in Kalispell host of volunteers and history aficionados can be found busily scanning, documenting and cataloguing historic collections for the museum.
One of those people is Jim Atkinson, a retiree who recently volunteered to painstakingly scan in hundreds of glass negatives taken by early Glacier National Park photographer T.J. Hileman.
Some of the photos have not seen the light of day for more than a 100 years. The photos lend insight into Glacier National Park before the Going-to-Sun Road as well as a fascinating and candid look at members of the Blackfeet Tribe.
Many of the photos were likely staged at least to some degree — Hileman used a large format camera and just setting up the camera is a laborious process. For example, the photographer’s view of the scene with a large format view camera is not only upside down, it’s reversed.
Still, that was the norm for the time and Hileman was extremely adept at taking great images, regardless of the limitations.
Born in 1882, Hileman was a native of Pennsylvania.
After working a while in Chicago and graduating from Effingham School of Photography there, he moved to Colorado and began to take photographs. In 1911, Hileman moved to Kalispell to open his own portrait studio. He married Alice Georgeson and reportedly, their’s was the first wedding in Glacier, which had officially become a park the year before.
Hileman is best known locally for his landscapes of Glacier. His photo of Grinnell Glacier taken in 1938 is often used to illustrate how much the glaciers in the park have receded in less than 100 years.
The following photos are part of the museum’s collection and offer a unique view of Glacier through and the Blackfeet Tribe in Hileman’s eyes.
Hileman died in 1945, but his photos live on and the museum plans on eventually displaying some of them as part of its ever-growing collection.
You can learn more about the museum at its website: https://www.nwmthistory.org/ or by simply visiting at 124 Second Ave. East Kalispell. Hours are Monday through Friday, holidays excluded, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
