This Week's Best Old Photos.

December 28, 2022.

1. Old California, 1860s.

First row: miners. Second row: Sugar Loaf Mountain and Webster's Station; photographer's campsite; the "North American Hotel." Third row: San Francisco harbor; the Abraham Lincoln giant sequoia; young Native Americans. [Lawrence and Houseworth Collection, Library of Congress].

2. Cowboys, Texas and Arizona, c. 1909.

Erwin E. Smith photographs, Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, and the Library of Congress.

3. Hollywood producer Mack Sennett, the “King of Comedy,” c. 1918.

Mack Sennett and comedian Fatty Arbuckle. Virginia Warwick, Harriet Hammond and Phyllis Haver. Mack Sennett "Glamour Girls" pose with tires. Marvel Rea, Ford Sterling and Alice Maison. The Keystone Cops, "In the Clutches of the Gang." Mabel Normand, Mack Sennett and Charlie Chaplin in "The Fatal Mallet." Sennett is credited with launching Chaplin's film career. [Library of Congress]

4. Immigrants at Ellis Island, New York Harbor, c. 1910.

New York Public Library

5. Testimony from an escaped slave, 1863.

Peter escaped from the Louisiana plantation of John and Bridget Lyons in March 1863 and walked for ten days to a Union encampmen…