McCracken Research Library

Vincent Mercaldo was a painter and artist. But many people, including his family, didn’t realize that he collected and manipulated photographs as well.

“What makes his collection really interesting is the fact that he was an artist and he wasn't afraid to manipulate images,” said Samantha Harper, an archivist at the McCracken Research Library. 

The McCracken Research Library at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West receives many gifts, donations and loans from patrons. The staff has to go through all the collections to catalog them and also find out what’s in them. 

From 1922 to 1934, there was a college preparatory school for boys down the south fork in Cody. The Valley Ranch Boarding School was founded by Larry Larom and Winthrop Brooks. 

Vincent Mercaldo was a collector of Western imagery. But he was also a painter and an artist. Samantha Harper, the archivist at the McCracken Research Library, said he would manipulate many images.

Samantha Harper is an archivist at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West’s McCracken Research Library. This job means that Harper digs through documents, photography and books every day.

In the early 1900s, Charles Clarke was a southern California teen runaway who worked setting up bowling pins. But his life changed in one moment, said Eric Rossborough, an associate librarian at the McCracken Research Library at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West.

When Leonard Cody Bell (not related) was nine years old, Buffalo Bill Cody offered him $10,000 if he would keep his hair long until he was 18. By the time Cody Bell was a teenager his hair was 58 inches long. 

The McCracken Research Library has been working to compile historical video footage of natural history events in the Greater Yellowstone Area.