Frost and Richard photograph region for a century

Although Jack Richard encapsulated the heart of northwest Wyoming through his camera lens during the mid to late 20th century, his family’s local history dates back long before the camera’s widespread use.

Bob Richard, Matt Hermes and Mack Frost compared aerial photographs by the late Jack Richard (1909–1992) and Google Earth satellite images at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West last month. The Tribune caught up with Bob Richard of Cody, Jack Richard’s son, recently to get a personalized glance of the prominent photographer.

People from around the Big Horn Basin attended the center’s presentation to see Bob’s father’s pictures.

“Their interest was really in Dad’s photos,” said Bob.

Jack, a pilot, took many aerial photographs.

Although a viewer can zoom in on landscapes with Google Earth, the image becomes distorted, Bob said. But, Google Earth does illustrate the changes since his father photographed the same features decades before.

Early entrepreneurs

A partnership between the Frost and Richard families was underway in the early 1900s.

Ned Frost came to the area in 1885 at age 6 with his family. They spent their first winter on the Upper South Fork of the Shoshone River among the Crow tribe. The following year, the Frosts settled on Sage Creek. Their ranch became a stopover for the stage route between Meeteetse and Red Lodge, Montana, Bob said.

The Frost place became a sojourn for celebraties, Bob said. Owen Wister wrote his famous novel, “The Virginian” there.

Ned Frost, and Bob’s grandfather, Fred Richard, entered a guiding partnership around 1906, Bob said. By 1913, they were leading more tourists through the East Gate of Yellowstone National Park than the total number of visitors entering any other park gate at the time.

With a full complement of passenger wagons, cook wagon, supply wagon and crew wagon, Frost and Richard’s 16-day Yellowstone expeditions transported 150 tourists per trip, Bob said.

Frost and Richard guided tourists in Yellowstone until the end of the 1930s. Through the last decade, the boys switched to trucks to haul gear while most of their clients rode horseback, Bob said.

Frost and Richard also guided tourists into Shoshone National Forest via pack trains, including Buffalo Bill Cody’s guests, Bob said. That included Fred taking Prince Albert I of Monaco up the North Fork of the Shoshone River in 1913 and Ned guiding industrialist, “Bet-a-Million” Gates (John Wayne Gates) in the Thorofare.

Bob met Prince Albert II of Monaco when he visited 100 years later. “He is a very nice gentleman,” Bob said.

Jack and his wife, Rhea (Neville) Richard, leased the Cody Enterprise from Ernest Shaw in 1941. Then, Jack joined the U.S. Marine Corps following the attack on Pearl Harbor Dec. 7, 1941, Bob said. Jack became an intelligence officer in the South Pacific.

Rhea ran the Enterprise, Bob said. One evening per week his mother would print the “Heart Mountain Sentinel,” the relocation center’s newspaper, with help from Japanese-American residents from the internment camp.

After Jack returned from the war in 1947, he and Jess Frost created “The Cody Times,” featuring plenty of regional photos along with news and advertisements, Bob said.

Jack purchased the Cody Enterprise shortly after purchasing the radio station KODI in the early 1950s. He sold both in the middle 1950s to return to his love as a full-time photographer, Bob said.

Later, Jack’s photos appeared in the “Lariat” section of the Enterprise, Bob said.

Bob said he recalled hawking newspapers for a nickel a piece as a boy. He also remembered being paid $10 per hour to help paint the KODI radio tower. 

Like father like son

Bob grew up on DND Ranch on Rattlesnake Creek, west of Cody, where he tended cattle and performed ranch chores when he wasn’t attending school, he said.

Jack began teaching Bob to fly when he was 9 years old, Bob said. 

Bob enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves in 1955. From 1956-60, he was a summer ranger in Yellowstone. In 1960 he graduated from college and received his Marine Corps commission. He became a Marine Naval aviator. In other words, the U.S. Navy taught him to fly, including catapulting off aircraft carriers in jets, he said.

He flew fixed wing and then rotor wing aircraft, performing 50 helicopter combat missions during the Vietnam War, Bob said. 

Bob is no slouch either when it comes to photography.

“I had a camera in my hand when I was 7,” Bob said. “It’s always been part of my blood.”

Bob found himself in his dad’s dark room developing photos and talked extensively with his father about photo composition, he said.

Father and son took photographic trips around the area, including winter excursions to Yellowstone, Bob said.

When Bob was not playing sports, he was photographing the games, he said.

Photography has come a long way since darkrooms were the norm a mere decade or two ago. Digital cameras allow photographers to capture images for expeditious downloading to computers and photo editing.

“Today he (Jack) would love the computers and what we do,” Bob said.

Nowadays

Bob has published three books, including, “Yellowstone Country: The Photographs of Jack Richard.” His fourth book, “Cody To Yellowstone Beartooth Loop Photographic Tour,” just came out. (See related story.) He said he is working on three other books. His central focus is a volume on Yellowstone history and an autobiography.   

Bob was owner of Grub Steak Expeditions Yellowstone Tours before retiring and selling it three years ago.

Jack’s photos can be browsed at tinyurl.com/JackRichardPhotos.

Tourists and locals alike can grab a new guide-picture book to locate the most spectacular locations in Northwest Wyoming and perhaps observe some wildlife along the way to Yellowstone National Park via the Beartooths.

“Cody To Yellowstone Beartooth Loop Photographic Tour,” by Bob Richard, will lead the reader to all the captivating northbound landmarks, towns and wild animals en route to Yellowstone. Just follow the author’s easy as pie directions.

Readers/sightseers can connect the dots so to speak. Richard has a map on the inside page with highway markers and towns for easy reference along with numbers depicting points of interest and features.

For example, No. 12 on Wyo. Highway 296 (Chief Joseph Scenic Highway) offers a panoramic view of the Beartooth Mountains and the Clarks Fork Canyon.

Some photos are present day while others date back decades or more.

Wagons were still widely used in Northwest Wyoming in the early years of the 20th century as a 1910 photo attests, taken on Bennett Creek in the Clark area. Richard’s grandparents, Fred and Margaret Richard, and his father, Jack Richard, spent a bone-chilling winter there in tents and an old cabin.

“Grandmother said it was below zero for over two, three weeks,” Richard said. One winter was enough; the Frost and Richard families bought a ranch on the North Fork of the Shoshone.

A 1951 photo of Richard’s mother, Rhea (Neville) Richard, is a spot on portrait of a Western woman in her fringed buckskin chaps and a jaunty hat holding the reins of her horse.

A photo of Cooke City, Montana, in 1959 reveals that little has changed in the intervening years with the exception of 1950s era automobiles and unsaddled horses jaywalking across the main drag. Suitably juxtaposed below the Cooke City photo is a contemporary shot of the Northeast Gate to Yellowstone, a few miles to the west.

Imposing mountains, seemingly bottomless canyons and elegant wildlife fill the vibrant pages.

His new book is every bit the equal of his 2011 book, “Cody to Yellowstone Self-Guided Photographic Tour,” Richard said.

The book would be handy for locals to identify mountains whose names escape them or for tourists whom fancy a pictorial chronicle of the places they visited on vacation, Richard said. “It’s easy to slide in a suitcase to take home and show their trip.”

The books can be found practically everywhere in Cody, including Buffalo Bill Center of the West and Pahaska Tepee west of Cody. In Powell, copies are at the Homesteader Museum on the corner of Clark and First streets.