L. A. Huffman Photograph Collection

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Collection SummaryThis digital collection consists of over 740 glass and film negatives by pioneering Miles City photographer Laton Alton Huffman (1854-1931) selected from a total of about 1,700 original negatives in the L. A. Huffman Photograph Collection. These photos document cowboys and ranch life in eastern Montana, Crow and Cheyenne Indians, the slaughter of buffalo, and the Custer Trail Expedition in 1916, among other subjects.

L. A. Huffman learned photography from his father in his native Iowa. He further developed his photographic and business skills during a short stint working for F. Jay Haynes in Minnesota in 1878. By Dec. 1879 he was post photographer at Fort Keogh, Montana Territory, eventually establishing a succession of studios in nearby Miles City. He kept up a significant business selling Indian portraiture, and hunting and ranching scenes, during the early 1880s, establishing a reputation as a respected regional photographer. He maintained his photography business in Miles City (and briefly in Billings) until his death in 1931. Huffman’s children and their descendants, the Kosters, preserved the collection of negatives after his death, with the assistance of Miles City photographer Jack Coffrin, until they were loaned and then donated to the Montana Historical Society in the early 1980s.
Contributing InstitutionMontana Historical Society Library and ArchivesRelated CollectionPhotographs from the Montana Historical SocietyRelated Person ExhibitL.A. Huffman

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L. A. Huffman Photograph Collection

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