The story of how a collection of photographic negatives from the 1920’s ambled into Tacomahistory town is shared in the previous post along with a selection of the scanned images. The collection of acetate and glass plate negatives reveal a treasure of details and portraits from a silent film set in Wyoming in the late 1800’s. Rusty Rustad, who owned the collection, left it to his son Allan, who remembers his father telling him about being a wrangler and extra in a silent movie. The movie is the obvious mystery and the dusty old path of inquiry we are tracing is about the film makers, the aventure story and cast and the place and time it was made.

This group of images captures details of the film setting, costumes and sets. In particular, the clues to the native american actors and camps remain unidentified. We are also intriqued by the glimpses of the railroad, the apparent steam locomotive, flatcar logos and trestle overpasses. So here is the next group of images from Rusty’s western. Anything you see or recognize as a clue or solution will be appreciated As the Butch Cassidy once said “Who are those guys?”…

Looking at the people and costumed actors in the collection its clear there are more women in the film than men. In one of the action sequences still to come, there is a shooting involving two women characters and the cowgirl protagonist seen most often is packing a sixgun and low slung holster. Here’s a look at the actors and costumes.

At one point in the scanning process as the images were appearing in positive light we wondered if the photos were simply a group of dude ranchers dressed up like old time cowboys and cowgirls. We didn’t see a movie camera or production equipment and there were no recognizable movie stars. But the identification of the Wyoming location and the movie making frenzy in the 1920’s kept us on the cinema trail. Then we put together a series of somewhat blurry frames that seemed to trace an action sequence…a gunfight maybe.

See what you think in the next post…coming soon