Marker Name: Clarence Bisbee - Photographer
Marker Type: Roadside
Marker Text:
The Bisbee Collection
The earliest dreamers knew how to sell Magic Valley, you just had to see it.
By 1904 Twin Falls was a real city with platted streets, basic services, permanent buildings, a canal company with hopes of making a million acres productive and a newspaper. What it needed were merchants, professionals, farmers, and laborers -- but they were far away without the means to see it for themselves.
Twin Falls News publisher, Charles Diehl, knew just the man to show it to them: Clarence E. Bisbee, a man he remembered from photography school in Illinois. Encouraged by Diehl, 30-year-old Bisbee arrived in Shoshone by train in January of 1906 and proceeded to Twin Falls by wagon.
Bisbee first worked from a tent, and then a brick studio at the corner of Second Ave. E. and Second St. E. (now Jerome St.). Clarence Bisbee himself was a skilled technician who ultimately became a force in the artistic life of Twin Falls.
His subjects were mostly promotional offering proof that schools, churches, businesses, and other necessities of civilization were established in this small town on the remote high desert. He recorded Magic Valley economic development, social life and landmarks, but mostly the area’s striking topography -- towns, the Snake River, the canyon, the falls, other natural features and irrigation systems from dams to ditches.
Agriculture was the second most frequently photographed subject, emphasizing modern machinery and abundant harvests of oversized fruits and vegetables. Although disinterested in commercial portrait photography, Bisbee’s photos included people and many scenes of city life, fairs, parks, holiday celebrations, and recreation. And there were images of businesses; imposing buildings in series from cornerstone to completion, or interiors of helpful clerks posing with fully stocked shelves, or inventories of the latest model cars, or illustrations of delivery vehicles at the ready.
By the time he retired in 1939, Bisbee’s priceless record of the prosperity of Twin Falls had failed to bring him personal financial security. At his death in 1954 his life’s work was left behind mostly in the form of glass-plate negatives. Local residents Gus Kelker, Dewitt R. Young, and Dr. Wallace Bond purchased the collection from Bisbee’s heirs and donated it to the Twin Falls Historical Society.
The collection consists of more than 2,350 images on glass-plate negatives maintained by the Twin Falls Public Library. Through their efforts in conjunction with Blip Studio, the collection has been fully catalogued, permanent archival storage has been secured, and public access is now provided through multiple media.
Few communities possess a treasure of this magnitude. Purely as an architectural record, the Bisbee collection is invaluable. But this collection is so much more; it is a nearly complete record of the first 30 years of the life of Twin Falls.
County: Twin Falls
City: Twin Falls
Group Responsible for Placement: City of Twin Falls
Date Dedicated: Not listed
Marker Number: Not listed
Web link(s) for additional information: Not listed
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