Autry National Center

Fred Rosenstock Collection of Western Americana

California for the tourist: the charm of the land of sunshine by summit, sea and shore. San Francisco, Calif.: Southern Pacific, 1910. Autry Library, Autry National Center; 98.70.6

Born in 1895 in the Austrian province of Galicia, Fred Rosenstock came to Rochester, New York as a child. In 1920 he suffered from pneumonia and was advised to move to a drier climate, so in August of that year Rosenstock boarded a train to California. While on the train, he lost his glasses and detrained in Denver to get new ones. He fell in love with Denver and did not get back on the train.

Rosenstock’s passion for reading and his interest in Western history led him to make a career in book selling, collecting, publishing and art dealing. For fifty-three years he owned and operated his own bookstore in Denver, Colorado and specialized in antiquarian books, school textbooks, books and ephemera related to Western Americana. In 1975 Rosenstock retired, but remained active in the rare book world. Rosenstock passed away in 1986, and the Autry Library acquired both his personal book collection and the inventory from his Denver store in 1990.

The Rosenstock Collection contains more than 21,000 titles of Western Americana as well as manuscripts, diaries, correspondence, photographs, maps, and visual ephemera. Ranging from the late 16th century to 1975, the bulk of the material dates from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century. The collection is strong in the exploration and settlement of the American West, the development of ranching, mining, and the railroads in the West; and the history of Colorado, with a particular focus on Denver.

Rosenstock resources include:

• Lottie Tillotson Collection. Publications and visual images collected by and documenting the travels of Tillotson, a pioneer female tourist in the Western United States, 1890-1916.
• Western Maps. More than 260 maps dating from the 1830s -1950s, with the bulk of the collection from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Contains pocket maps, topographic and geologic surveys, military expeditions, mining districts, transportation routes, and townships. The strength of the collection is in Colorado.
• John Bratt Collection. Contains the records of the Nebraska-based John Bratt & Co. ranching firm (1869-1895), founded by English immigrant Bratt in 1870. This collection includes monthly inventories of livestock, cattle sale records, lists of cattle brands and marks, an inventory of company land, accounts of time worked by ranch hands, and accounts of provision purchases.