Robert Limbert moved to Boise in 1911. Nearby, he found the Sawtooths --a land full of opportunity and beauty, which he set out to capture on film. Limbert's photographs and articles are some of the earliest records of this rugged terrain.
It is a vast region of inviting mystery as primitive and as unsullied by the hand of man as it was when our Pilgrim forefathers landed at Plymouth Rock.
Truly, I wish the power were granted me to have every man, woman, and child old enough to appreciate the fact, come with me and gaze down some of these canyons, mighty abysses of time, and to look upward at the dizzy slopes of the great mountain monoliths spread that tower on every side. Those whom it affected it would do good, and to the few who failed to grasp this wonderful opportunity of holding communion along with Nature, it surely would do no harm.
At the summit we sat speechless for over thirty minutes silently absorbing the wonderful panorama spread out before us. In the canyons below, we counted exactly forty one lakes, some of them several miles long. Covered by the points of the compass, north, south, east and west, were positively hundreds of jagged mountain crags. Suddenly, my companion turned to me and in a tone of awe remarked that he felt "like a fly on the wall of the world."
I climbed to the crest of a peak, being accompanied by a companion who had been a top sergeant in the army and who had been in charge of a train of pack mules. He was, without a doubt, the most blasphemous man I had ever encountered during a life time spent in the west. It happened to be his first experience in the high hills and I was curious to see how it would effect him. After the customary period of silence which seems to affect one who has this experience for the first time, I sat waiting for him to speak. When he did so I was never more surprised in my live, for he said, "There is a God, ain't they?"
Another item of fishing sport seldom obtainable other places is the Pacific salmon run, big husky fellows weighing from twenty-five to forty pounds which you spear with a pitchfork on the riffles during the latter part of July and August. The novice, much to the glee of his companions, who attempts this exciting event for the first time is generally quickly upset for his first few trials before he learns to handle his fish.
The trees, the big timbered giants of the hills that show by their size that they were old when we were young, clothe the slopes in every available spot that offers the life giving soil so necessary to their existence. Pines, firs, junipers, quaking aspen, cottonwoods, alders, and willows form the majority of the timber, while, tucked away in the pockets of the upper basins are as many more varieties, each peculiar to this country.
Waterfalls that were before, perhaps unnoticed, hang suspended as white silvery curtains, and at the same time the mist at the bottom floats up the canyon in the night breezes.
In places like these, one may sit entranced for hours at a time, for it is impossible to exaggerate the grandeur, the sublimity, and the impressiveness of the place. Its fascination cannot be accurately described. It is a land of a thousand different moods and no one can know it for what it is without living in it for every day of the year.
Modern magic, the camera, while it records faithfully the lights and shadows, it does not tell all the truth because it fails entirely to convey any idea of the wonderful coloring or the ever changing atmospheric sea of prismatic light which prevails at all hours of the day and night.
When you have come to know this country thoroughly and have an intimate knowledge of the lakes, the canyons and the peaks, you will know that you have turned an unforgettable page in the book of your Life Experience. Be where it may, north, or south, or east, or west, you will know also that you have reached the peak of achievement in outdoor scenery.
From 'Two Gun' Bob, by Glenn Oakley, Focus Magazine.
His name was Bob Limbert: naturalist, explorer, guide, humorist, author, photographer, entertainer, poet, painter, trick shoot artist, taxidermist, sculptor, big game hunter, bird and animal imitator.
He was also undoubtedly the most flamboyant and active publicist Idaho has ever known, a one-man department of tourism. More than a half century ago Limbert perceived Idaho's beauty to be one of the state's greatest financial assets. He recorded the natural wonders of Idaho on film and canvas, toured the nation extolling its grandeur, good fishing and hunting, and started several enterprises capitalizing on wilderness tourism.
Today his collection of negatives, photographs, documents, and newspaper clippings from 1915-1933 are being catalogued and preserved in the Boise State Library archives. The Limbert collection provides a unique look at Idaho in transition.
His photographs in particular document features of the state that have since changed or been destroyed -- petroglyphs now obliterated by bullets, salmon runs now decimated by hydroelectric dams, vegetation since changed by grazing, fire and invader species, buildings since razed, communities and life-styles now non-existent.
What emerges from the packages of photographs, the black scrapbooks and the dry, brown documents is the life of a man -- one who was shaped by the West, and in turn helped create the West. Like a trick carnival mirror, Limbert reflected the state and its people with exaggeration and humorous distortion.
He shows motion pictures of the Sawtooth Mountains. In the Sawtooths, he says, "there are no snakes, no poison ivy, no dust, no hot days or nights, and no poisonous insects. It is the ideal vacation land of America." The Sawtooths and Idaho practically overflow with birds and mammals of all kinds, he says. And then he gives imitations of their calls. He can do over 130 animal calls, so realistic they fool the animals themselves.
After the motion pictures are over he readies the audience for the highlight of the evening --
A lot of it was vaudeville showmanship, exploiting the Western myths for the entertainment of Easterners and profit. Limbert told the Idaho Daily Statesman, upon his return from the lecture circuit, "As a matter of fact, until I adopted the garb (cowboy hat, chaps) I couldn't make any money. Nobody would believe that I came from the West, in spite of my sunburned complexion and close acquaintance with firearms."
Indeed, two characters emerge from his letters: Limbert the mythical Westerner, and Limbert the businesslike American exploiting a new natural resource.
Limbert did live out the Western myth. Born in Omaha, Neb., he had a boyhood fascination with nature that did not diminish. He studied taxidermy there, filling sketch books with detailed animal anatomies to learn the musculature and conformation of the animals he would stuff.
In 1911 he moved from Omaha to Boise to work as a taxidermist. He was apparently as good at self-promotion as he was at taxidermy. Just three years after his arrival in Boise he was commissioned to produce the Idaho exhibit at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco. That exhibit,
In the spring of 1917 he made an epic journey across the Craters of the Moon, making some 200 photographs of the region with a large view camera.
Limbert did not discover Craters of the Moon. The vast volcanic region was known all too well to numerous homesteaders, ranchers and travelers. But it was known as a place to avoid, and those who did venture into it quickly left, says Crater of the Moon park interpreter David Clark. "As soon as they got into it they decided they'd had enough and got out," he said. "Limbert appears to be one of the first people who explored the Great Rift." Furthermore, he began to promote Craters of the Moon as a major tourist attraction.
He sent President Calvin Coolidge a scrapbook with pictures and narration detailing his trip across the Great Rift. His 1924 National Geographic article brought additional attention to the area. Within a few months Coolidge declared a portion of the Great Rift as the Craters of the Moon National Monument, although it is doubtful the article itself induced the president's decision.
Limbert quickly secured a contract to provide guided tours through the new national attraction. By the mid-1920's Limbert was busy enough with his guiding services in the summer and speaking engagements in the winter to abandon his taxidermy business. With Dorothy Fox as his agent, Limbert hit the road with a Wild West show. Under the auspices of a newly formed conservation group, the Izaak Walton League, Limbert toured the Midwest and East, giving two-hour shows in auditoriums for crowds of people who only wished they could be like "Two Gun" Bob Limbert -- "The Man from the Sawtooths."
His shows were apparently successful, due in no small part to Limbert's flair for publicity. When he arrived in Chicago for a series of shows he publicly challenged Al Capone and other gangsters to a gunfight. He told the press: "From what I read, I supposed I'd meet some real he-shooters here. Say, print a piece for me in your paper, will you? Say that I'd like to take on any 10 bad men in your burg. Sure, I'll take 'em on all at once. I ain't boasting, mind you, but if I can't shoot the guns out of the hands of these starched-up little pets, my name ain't Bob Limbert."
In many ways Limbert was a visionary, foreseeing the attraction of wilderness and wild places, the longing for the disappearing frontier -- and recognizing that people would be willing to pay to experience it.
But in some cases he misjudged what sort of wildness the public wanted. Craters of the Moon never became a destination point for vacationing Easterners. And to this day the Bruneau Canyon remains an unknown even to most Idahoans living within 50 miles of it. Those places were too severe.
Limbert apparently learned from his Wild West shows that folks responded best to the Alps-like Sawtooth Mountains, the hunting and fishing and camping. He began concentrating his efforts there, building Redfish Lodge and securing Forest Service rights to the best -- and sometimes only building locations on Alturas and Petit Lakes. Touring with the Wild West shows in the winter and guiding in the summers, he was getting by, if not exactly making a killing.
(In 1933,) while still on the traveling circuit, he received news that his mother was dying. Rushing back west he died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Wyoming. He was 48 years old.
Truly it is a land of romance, of adventure, and of unsurpassed scenery, of mighty mountain canyons, with range upon range of towering, jagged, snowcapped mountain peaks, each seeming to beckon and lure you ever onward.
the most amazing trick shooting ever seen. He tosses a corked jar in the air and in a blue steel blur draws his revolver and shoots a hole through the cork and out the bottom of the jar, leaving the sides unscathed.
with its large-scale models of Shoshone Falls (running water and all), Arrowrock Dam and irrigated farmlands, and the Sawtooth Mountains, garnered a boxful of medals, more than any other country or state at the expo.