Photographs are mainly from the time period 1901-1912. Papers and a few photographs are in a separate Collection: MS 165. The photographs in the manuscript collection are part of the Minnie Madsen Brink correspondence.

William W. Sale was an avid photographer who photographed some of the images but none are signed. He also knew many of the photographers who worked in Nome: F. H. Nowell, Huey & Laws, Simmer, Goetze, and Lomen; the work of these photographers is also in the collection. Goetze may have taken some of the unsigned shots; Sale and Goetze shared living quarters for some of their time in Nome.

No recognizable overall order or grouping is apparent in most of the albums. Some images appear to be grouped by subject, but other images on same subject may appear later in the same album or again in a totally different group or album. Subjects include Eskimos, dog mushing, portraits, Nome, buildings, gold camps, railroads, steamships, and telegraph stations,

The photographs are numbered consecutively throughout the collection. Some images are repeated in different albums; this fact may be noted, but the physical photograph is given a consecutive number since duplicates continue to be discovered. Box number 5 contains images and notes about photographs used in the book One Dog Short; the numbers are out of sequence as they were pulled from the rest of the collection.

Although the collection spans the years from 1899-1998, the bulk of the material centers around the 1900-1912 period, much of it spent in Nome, Alaska. It is from this time period primarily that the book by the Krugs, One Dog Short, was written. The early correspondence is from Will Sale to Neeta Tobey. There are several files on the Sourdough clubs’ activities primarily centered in the California area where the Sales lived from the 1950’s-1970’s.

Some of the material was collected by John W. and Caryl Sale Krug as they gathered information for the above-mentioned book about Mrs. Krug’s parents. This accounts for much of the material after 1960. Donations to the Krugs were from Minnie Madsen Brink, Richard T. Lindemann, and Tom Watson. Files from these donors are labeled as such and follow the Sales’ documents. The correspondence and photographs donated by Minnie Madsen Brink are arranged chronologically.