CHADRON – Historic black-and-white photographs by Mabel Graham McIntosh Souther are on display at the Mari Sandoz High Plains Heritage Center through the fall 2025 semester. The exhibit is free and open to public Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to noon and 1 to 4 p.m.

The exhibit includes a large panorama of Crawford taken about 1901 and a tripod Souther used in her work. Sandoz Center Program Coordinator Laure Sinn said she and Bruce McIntosh, Souther’s great-nephew and a Dawes County resident, created the exhibit.

The exhibit features a pair of Souther’s cross-country skis, an oil painting, her portrait, and photographs depicting ranching, hunting, trapping, cultural, and recreational activities in eastern Wyoming and western Nebraska.

Souther, born in 1864 in Ypsilanti, Michigan, was the daughter of Charles McIntosh and Martha Graham.

According to McIntosh, Souther and her two younger teenage brothers came to live with their aunt in Crawford after their parents died.

“Mabel had to get an apartment in town during the winter of 1888-89 so that she could regularly open the post office where she was the deputy postmaster,” McIntosh said.

Souther married Williams Souther in 1892, according to McIntosh. The couple raised four children: John “Barron,” Susan Page, Grace, and Mabel. Later, she was the chief clerk of the wholesale grocery house Barron & Souther. She died in Lincoln in 1962 and is buried in Crawford.

Souther was commissioned by Marshall Field, a prominent Chicago business owner, to provide photographic documentation of Williams’ and Marshall’s mutual investments including a large sheep ranch near Crawford and the Big Red Ranch near Ucross, Wyoming, where Williams was the foreman. He died in 1908 leaving Mabel with many business holdings and four children, according to McIntosh. 

In 1962, Souther’s daughter Mabel, donated 40 of her photographs to the Nebraska State Historical Society. Her camera and photographic equipment are preserved in the society’s museum.