The Long Trail Home

By Mike Bowen, co-author, We Found the Lost Sand Creek Site

While Chuck and Sheri Bowen were in the midst of finding thousands of Sand Creek artifacts in the summer of 1997, another piece of history was added to their collection.

Frank Sherman owned a photography and souvenir shop in Colorado City. He had three brothers, Francis, and the twins, Stanford and Seeley, who lived with their family on Rush Creek near Chivington, Colorado. Stanford was the roundup foreman for the Holt Cattle Company when he was only twenty years old. The Holt Cattle Company headquarters was about twenty miles Southwest of Hugo, Colorado. 

Sherman followed the cowboys in 1903 and photographed them as they worked on the range. One day, the cowboys were surprised with a visit from President Theodore Roosevelt in Hugo. He ate with them, and Sherman documented the visit with his camera and sold the photos to the tourists at his souvenir shop. They were likely taken near Kit Carson along Sand Creek all the way up to the Hugo region.

The late John Eggen, of Oregon, owned the 5×7 inch glass negatives and published two photography books from them. He and his wife operated a photography studio, and he was also his town’s mayor in ‘69 and ‘70. Eggen had prints made of the cowboy photos and one of them was gifted to President Ronald Reagan. 

Chuck has a love for history, photography, ranching, and antiques—he desired to bring those glass plates back to the area they were created. 

It’s an incredible story how the negatives made their way from Colorado to Eggen in Oregon.  

Chuck needed a way to contact Eggen. The Bowens visited the Chivington Friends Church for a going away dinner for the pastor, Robert Storms. During conversation with David Adamson, the nephew of Francis Sherman (Frank’s brother), the topic of Frank photographing the cowboys came up. Chuck mentioned his interest in the glass plate negatives. David mentioned owning Eggen’s books which provided details to contact him. Chuck was able to make contact and set up a time to see the glass plates in person. 

In August 1997, Chuck and Sheri traveled to Oregon to meet with John and his wife. A deal was made, and the collection was brought back to Colorado. Chuck and Sheri made prints from the glass plates and sold them to gift shops and other stores. One shop that displayed their cowboy photos was the Garden of the Gods Trading Post in Colorado Springs. Other shops that displayed and/or sold their cowboy photos included the Flying W Ranch, Ruxton’s Trading Post in Manitou Springs, the Brickwall Antique Emporium in Lamar, and Bar E Ranch of Clinton, AR website, to name a few. Tim Haas owned the Garden of the Gods Trading Post and was Chuck’s high school typing teacher.

A photo of one of the Sherman brothers found its way into the music video for “Beer For My Horses” by Toby Keith and Willie Nelson. The photo appears during these lyrics, “Grandpappy told my pappy, back in my day, son.” 

Beer For My Horses video

Frank Sherman took the photos in 1903, and the negatives made their way back to southeast Colorado 94 years later in 1997 after Frank Sherman moved to Oregon and stored the negatives in his attic. 

“About 1965 a woman living in the old Sherman place called Eggen Photographers in Lebanon, Oregon and told Mr. Eggen that she had found some old boxes of what looked like photographic negatives while she was going through the attic. She wanted to get rid of them, and if no one wanted them she would take them to the dump. Mr. Eggen had no idea what was on them, but knew that since they were glass negatives they had to have been from around the turn of the century. He immediately accepted the offer and went to get boxes of negatives. Later he discovered that they were a priceless collection of more than 300 negatives, most of which pictured the cattle industry on the open range in the West of that period. The West That Was brings the people and work of the Old West to life again” John Eggen (The West That Was, 1991). 

The glass negatives are over 120 years old, and only three people have owned them, including the photographer. They have been in the Bowen collection for over 25 years. 

Dominating the Bowen collection is over 4,000 battle and village artifacts from Sand Creek. In the late ‘90s, Chuck and Sheri discovered the true location of Black Kettle’s camp on Sand Creek and many running battle locations. Learn more about this incredible discovery on this website. Click the Blogs tab at the top of this page.  

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Truth matters and truth wins!