Object Details
Artist
Margaret Bourke-White
Date
1936 (negative), ca. 1965 (print)
Medium
Gelatin silver print
Dimensions
Image: 13 5/8 × 19 1/8 inches (34.6 × 48.6 cm)
Mount (Matted): 22 1/16 × 27 15/16 inches (56 × 71 cm)
Credit Line
Gift of the artist, Class of 1927, and LIFE Magazine
Object
Number
65.574
When LIFE sent Bourke-White to photograph the Fort Peck Montana Dam project, the editors expected co(…)
When LIFE sent Bourke-White to photograph the Fort Peck Montana Dam project, the editors expected construction pictures. What they got, the editors wrote in their introductory note to the first issue of the magazine, was “a human document of American frontier life.” Ten thousand people were hired to work on the dam—but thousands more, including workers’ families, had to be accommodated. Wheeler was one of six frontier towns that developed near the government town of Fort Peck. At its height, nearly thirty-five thousand people lived in Fort Peck and adjacent communities. (“Margaret Bourke-White: From Cornell Student to Visionary Photojournalist,” curated by Stephanie Wiles and presented at the Johnson Museum January 24 – June 7, 2015)
