| Photos From Wyoming Tales and Trails This Page: C. J. Belden photos continued. |
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| Photos From Wyoming Tales and Trails This Page: C. J. Belden photos continued. |
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About This Site |
 "End of a Fishing Trip in Florida." Photo by Charles J. Belden. Belden and Verna moved to North Redington Beach, Florida, near St. Petersburg. At the time, St. Petersburg had a reputation as being the "City of the Living Dead" where the elderly played suffleboard, sat on green benches and ate lunch at Webb's City, the "World's Largest Drugstore."
 Retirement Hotel at 137 Central Ave., St. Petersburg, Fl, photo by Charles J. Belden. In Florida, Belden was seemingly unable to restart his photographic reputation. He was reduced to taking photographs of salads for a Tarpon Springs Greek restaurant and advertising postcards to be sold or given away to tourists.
 Advertising Postcard for the Wedgewood Room Restuarant, St. Petersburg, photo by Charles J. Belden. The photographs are not well known. Of over 130,000 scanned photographs in the Florida Bureau of Archives collection, there are only three Belden photos: two postcards of the St. Petersburg Yacht Club and one of Ross Allen's rattlesnake hunters in camp.
 George L. Espenlaub (center), snake hunter for Ross Allen's Reptile Center, with two other snake catchers, in Florida Everglades. Photo by Charles J. Belden, approx. 1955, courtesy Florida Bureau of Archives, Tallahassee, Florida. Ross Allen (1908-1981) operated a snake and reptile show at Silver Springs near Ocala, Florida. In the show, Allen would milk snakes, Seminole Indians would wrestle alligators, and tourists could buy live reptiles which could be taken back to New York to be released in the sewers. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of The Yearling and Cross Creek, overcame her fear of snakes after Allen took her on a snake hunt in Florida's cattle country. In Cross Creek she described the rattlesnake hunt: The hunting ground was Big Prairie, south of Arcadia and west of the northern tip of Lake Okeechobee. Big Prairie is a desolate cattle country, half marsh, half pasture, with islands of palm trees and cypress and oaks. At that time of year the cattlemen and Indians were burning the country, on the theory that the young fresh wire grass that springs up from the roots after a fire is the best cattle forage. Ross planned to hunt his rattlers in the forefront of the fires. They lived in winter, he said, in gopher holes, coming out in the midday warmth to forage, and would move ahead of the flames and be easily taken.Allen captured 32 snakes which he carried from the open wilds back back to civilization in the back of his coupé. At first Rawlings had the fear that he would carry them loose in the car. He actually caried them in a wire cage.
 Postcard for Ross Allen's snake show, photo by Charles J. Belden. The postcard was intended to illustrate the difference between the deadly coral snake (upper) and the harmless king snake (lower). Mrs. Rawlings, as indicated, had a fear of snakes. Digging in her garden one day, she came across a multi-colored snake. Realizing that her fear was irrational she played with it a while, allowing the snake to crawl between her fingers and petting the snake. In Cross Creek Mrs. Rawlings explained: My determination to use common sense might have been my undoing. One late winter day in my first year I discovered under the palm tree by the gate a small pile of Amaryllis bulbs. The yard was desperate for flowers and greenery and I began separating the bulbs to set out for spring blooming. I dug with my fingers under the pile and brought out in my hand not a snake, surely, but a ten-inch long piece of Chinese lacquer. The slim inert reptile was an exquisite series of shining bands of yellow and black and vermilion, with a tiny black nose. I thought, "Here is a snake, in my hands, and it is as beautiful as a necklace. This is the moment in which to forget all nonsense." I let it slide back and forth through my fingers. Its texture was like satin. I played with it a long time, then killed it reluctantly with a stick, not for fear or hate, but because I decided to cure the skin for an ornament on the handle of a riding crop. I salted the hide and tacked it to a sunny wall. I showed it proudly to my friend Ed Hopkins, who was teaching me the Florida flora and fauna.Mrs. Rawlings' fear of snakes returned. Allen's show closed in the 1970's as a result of competition by Disney World. Across the street from Silver Springs was a western attraction known as "Six Gun Territory" which is now a shopping center. Allen later went to work for an alligator ranch at St. Augustine. He had plans for reopening his show, but died of a heart attack a month before his new road-side attraction was to open. In Wyoming there are two varieties of rattlesnakes, the prairie rattler and the midget faded rattler. The snakes typically emerge from hybernation in the spring. They normally adopt a live and let live attitude, hiding as one goes by or attempting to escape. If surprised or stepped upon, however, it may strike in defense.
 Bellinger Apartments, Advertising photo by Charles J. Belden. No longer were Belden's photographs featured on the covers of magazines. No longer was Belden an acclaimed photographer. The stories that the photographs told were weak and, instead, they reflect on the tragedy of Charles Bleden.
 Young ladies at the St. Petersburg Municipal Pier, 1959. Photo by Charles J. Belden.
 St. Petersburg Yacht Club. Photo by Charles J. Belden.
 Bathhouse, Weekiwachee Springs. In 1965, according to records of the Clerk of the Circuit Court, Pinellas County, Charles Belden became involved in two seperate lawsuits. In February 1966, Charles Josiah Belden in the darkroom at his North Redington Beach home took a firearm and committed suicide. Seven years later Verna died. Frances Phelps Belden remained in Wyoming and died in 1984. Belden's imagery still influences us today. In an east coast western-themed resuarant, amongst yokes, saddles, and cowboy boots used as decorations, the writer has observed Belden photos. Currently, large collections of Belden photos are held by the Charles J. Belden Museum of Western Photography, 1947 State St., Meeteetse, the Draper Museum in Cody, and the American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, Laramie. The museum in Meeteetse also has exhibits of early life in Meeteetse, the back bar from the Meeteetse Hotel, and a grizzly bear, "Little Wahb," who killed some $20,000 of livestock before he was killed at Sage Creek a short distance outside of town on Oct. 3, 2000.
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