[One large albumen photograph of a 40 mule team Holt Combine harvester with operators seated on the harvester, and laborers beside at the farm of William Thomas]. by [CALIFORNIA -- PHOTOS]. LOGAN, [Charles W.] (Photographer) - ca. 1895].

Stockton, CA & Elliot, San Joaquin, CA: Logan, 15 S. San Joaquin St., ca. 1895]. One albumen photograph sized 6.25 x 8.25 in. mounted on 9 x 10.75 in. gray board, embossed photographer’s studio stamp in lower corners of boards, glass plate negative number within image, w/ photographer’s logo at lower fore-edge (slight rubbing), still excellent image w/ strong contrast. This fine albumen photo records the bustling agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley near Stockton, California at the end of the 20th century. This image shows the Holt Combine Harvester first developed by Benjamin, Amos, Charles & William Holt who began manufacturing this style of combine in 1883, and continued to adapt and develop them before moving their business to Walla Walla, WA, to sell to wheat farmers in eastern Oregon and Washington. Benjamin Holt (1849-1920) was the innovator who first developed a crude wooden caterpillar crawler tractor in 1904. Thomas (b. 1859) was born in Utah Territory to Welsh farmers, later moved to the San Joaquin Valley to set up his large wheat farm in the 1880s, owned and operated by he and his wife Huldah into the 1930s. Logan (1852-1934), trekked over the Oregon Trail from Iowa to Oregon in a wagon built by he and his cousin when they were teenagers, and eventually settled in Ashland, OR by 1880 where he set up a photography studio. His boyhood experiences coming over the trail were written into historical fiction by his cousin, a Carmel, CA author, Alice MacGowan as The Trail of the Little Wagon (1928), describing their adventures meeting Buffalo Bill and Brigham Young. Logan operated his studio in Ashland, OR for a number of years, and later relocated to Stockton, CA in the late 1890s, where he worked as a photographer for over 15 years before retiring and moving to Monterey, CA to become a gentleman farmer. See: Benjamin Holt, Production Technology (2009); Pernie, Benjamin Holt (1849-1920): The Father of the Caterpillar Tractor (2009); Thompson, The Legacy of Fire in Agriculture and Subsidence in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (2015).