General Introduction to the Lovejoy Journals

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Enhanced photograph of the four Lovejoy Journals, South Pass State Historic Site, Wyoming. 
 
The Lovejoy Journals showing some evidence of the damage they sustained in storage (Photo digitally enhanced, original courtesy of South Pass State Historic Site).

Introduction

In 2007, South Pass City State Historic Site acquired four journals that, initially, were thought to have been authored by Fred Lovejoy, a resident of South Pass City in the 1880s and 1890s, who had moved on and became an influential and respected businessman in Jackson, Wyoming. The journals were laboriously transcribed, requiring careful handling because of their age and the water damage they sustained during storage.

Once the transcripts were read, it became obvious that the journals had more than one author. The first two journals, with entries dating from September 1886 to October 1887 and from May 1889 to June 1890, were written by Dr. Walter Lovejoy, Fred Lovejoy’s older brother.  The third journal, with entries dating from January through June 1895, were authored by Fred Lovejoy. The fourth journal was written by Walter and his sons, James and Addison from April 1902 to Winter 1904.

The first three journals provide a fascinating picture of life in and around South Pass City as the community transitioned from its origin as a gold-rush mining camp into a small, increasingly settled rural community. The fourth journal shifts the story forward several years, following Walter and his sons on a series of travels after the family had left South Pass City. Collectively, the journals also reveal something unexpected: while Fred Lovejoy would become the better-known of the two brothers, it is Walter whose writings provide the richest surviving account of the Lovejoy family's years in the South Pass area.

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