Lora Webb Nichols
Illustration — A 1909 portrait of Lora Webb Nichols Lora Webb Nichols (1883–1962) was an American photographer and diarist.
Also recorded as Lora Webb Oldman · Lora Webb
Lora Webb Nichols
Public domain
- Born
- 1883 · Boulder.
- Died
- 1962 · Encampment.
- Nationality
- United States
- Occupation
- photographer
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Illustration — A 1909 portrait of Lora Webb Nichols Lora Webb Nichols (1883–1962) was an American photographer and diarist.
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wikidata · Q107059478 · wikipedia · Lora Webb Nichols
In this article
Early life and education
Early life and education
Nichols was born in Boulder, Colorado. Her grandfather was Colorado Lieutenant Governor David H. Nichols. She moved with her family to Encampment, Wyoming.
Life and work
Life and work
Nichols began photographing in 1899 at age 16. Lucy Davies, writing in The Daily Telegraph, described her work as recording Wyoming's "inconsequential chores and rituals (washing, shovelling snow, braiding hair) rather than grand events. Even so, her frank, bold pictures capture the clean-cut thrill of pioneer life, of America's hugeness and scope." Around 1905, Nichols built a darkroom and worked as a photographer and a photo finisher. In 1925, she founded three businesses in Encampment: the Rocky Mountain Studio which developed film and loaned cameras; The Encampment Echo newspaper; and The Sugar Bowl, selling soda and ice cream. When cowboys and young men in the Civilian Conservation Corps passed through town, Nichols would loan them a camera and ask them to return with photographs. These images represent about a third of her archive. In 1935, she moved to Stockton, California and worked in a children's home, eventually becoming its director. She returned to Encampment in 1956, where she died in 1962.
Personal life
Personal life
She had six children.
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 2 entries
1883
Lora Webb Nichols born at Boulder.
1962
Lora Webb Nichols died at Encampment.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
Boulder.
Birth place
Encampment.
Death place
Publications
• Encampment, Wyoming: Selections from the Lora Webb Nichols Archive 1899–1948. Amsterdam: Fw, 2020. Edited by Nicole Jean Hill.. With essays by Nancy F. Anderson and Hill. • Amsterdam: Fw, 2021.
Legacy
There are 24,000 photographs in Nichols' archive, 16,000 of them taken by her, held at the American Heritage Center of the University of Wyoming. That archive also includes a manuscript for her unfinished memoir, I Remember: a Girl's Eye View of Early Days in the Rocky Mountains. Her diaries and other photographs are held at Grand Encampment Museum in Encampment.
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The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 17 August 2026.
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