Special Collections, Kegley Library, Wytheville Community College
Special Collections© 2011 By Wytheville Community College. All rights reserved.
Processed by: Cathy Carlson Reynolds
Collection is open to research.
There are no restrictions.
Arthur Meaux Kent Photograph Collection, Mss. Collection 1999.3, Kegley Library, Wytheville Community College, Wytheville, VA
Donated by Mary B. Kegley in 2003; additional photographs (folders 6-43) donated in 2009.
The son of Joseph Gordon Kent and Mary Randolph Kent, Arthur Meaux Kent was born in 1896 in Wythe County, Virginia. He graduated from Cornell University in 1924 and began working for the United States Forest Service. He spent several years traveling in the southeastern United States as part of the Southern Appalachian Traveling Fire Prevention Project. As part of this project he photographed scenes in national forests across the region and developed lantern slide presentations.
Kent also worked in Idaho, Alaska, and Louisiana. He spent his later years in Arizona and Wytheville, Virginia. He died 18 November 1983 and is buried in East End Cemetery in Wytheville, Virginia.
In 1898 the United States Forest Service actively pursued the acquisition and creation of photographs chronicling the natural and cultural history of forestry. With the creation of national forests in the early 1900s, photography of forest flora, fauna and manmade structures escalated. In the 1920s, Forest Service employees E. S. Shipp and Arthur M. Kent photographed scenes in the Unaka National Forest (later the Jefferson National Forest), Choctawhatchee National Forest, Pisgah National Forest, and other locales.
This collection consists of 376 photographs and supporting documents. Folder 1 contains an August 1925 list of photographs taken in Unaka National Forest and correspondence dated 1971-1972 regarding identification of these historic photographs. Folder 2 contains thirteen images from the Unaka National Forest. Folder 3 contains images of Choctawhatchee National Forest in Florida. Folder 4 and Folder 5 contains unidentified photographs.
The bulk of the collection consists of 335 photographs donated as an addendum. Folders 6 - 10 cover Florida National Forest. Folders 11 - 14 contains photographs from Pisgah National Forest. Folder 15 - 18 are images from Nantahala National Forest.
Photographs from Natural Bridge Forest are in Folders 19-20. Folder 21-23 covers Shenandoah National Forest while Folder 24 covers Unaka National Forest. Folder 25 -27 contain photographs from Cherokee National Forest; Folder 28 covers Tahoe-Eldorado National Forest. Folder 29 covers Monongahela National Forest and Folder 30 covers Cherokee National Forest. Folder 31 -34 covers Ocala National Forest and Choctawhatchee National Forest. Folders 35 - 41 covers Cherokee National Forest. Folder 42 covers Gila National Forest and Pisgah National Forest. Folder 43 covers Florida National Forest.
Masters and negatives of the National Forest photographs, known as the Permanent Image Collection, are housed in the National Archives, Record Group 95, Series G. The National Agriculture Library in Beltsville, Maryland also has prints from the National Forest collection. Photographs were numbered after 1920 in sequence from 150,000; National Forest numbers for photographs in the Kent collection are noted in the folder listing if known. A finding aid for the entire National Forest collection in both repositories is available in the form of a video disk, accessible on-site at the repositories. For more information, please contact the National Archives at College Park, 8601 Adelphi Road, College Park, Maryland 20740-6001 or the National Agriculture Library, 10301 Baltimore Ave., Beltsville, Maryland.