Hollywood Babylon

When people think of Bradford in any historical sense, they think of oil and the remarkable effect that it has had on the community. The discovery of black gold in the late 1870s literally erased the earlier image of a backwoods lumber town and firmly established Bradford as a place of millionaires and mansions, people and progress. This latter image is so strong, however, that a very important part of the history of Bradford is often overlooked a phenomenon that this volume strives to correct.Each photograph is from the collection of the Bradford Landmark Society, and many of these pictures have never before been published. Covering the era from the late 1850s to the mid-1940s, Around Bradford focuses on a time that people regard with fondness and hold firmly in their memories. We can never hear what those Bradfordians heard and we can never feel what they felt, but we can see what they saw through photographs.