About the Photo Archive

Why An Archive Website?

For years, former staff and participants have contacted Philmont hoping that a photo archive may exist. Individuals are often thrilled to find out that the archive is real. However, the archive is organized by year and expedition number. Without knowing these key numbers, it had been nearly impossible to locate photos.

The development of the archive website makes it possible for individuals who have misplaced their expedition number to reunite with their photos.

How many photos are stored?

Today, there are 240,000 photos in the online archive.

History of the Photo Archive

  • 1965 – Philmont began saving participant and staff photo negatives
  • 1993 – Black and white photography was phased out in favor of color
  • 2007 – Film development was retired in favor of new digital cameras
  • 2007 – A high-end digital scanner was obtained in the interest of preserving the analog negative archive
  • July 2013 – Philmont began developing the archive website
  • Oct 2014 – Over 100,000 negatives from 2006 back through 1988 uploaded ahead of online photo archive website launch.
  • Nov 2014 – 1987-1986 added to online archive
  • Jun 2015 – 1985 added to online archive
  • Jul 2015 – 1984 added to online archive
  • Aug 2015 – 1983 added to online archive
  • Oct 2015 – 1982 added to online archive
  • Oct 2015 – 1981 added to online archive
  • Jun 2016 – 1980, 1979, 1978, 1977, 1976 added to online archive
  • August 2016 – 1966 – 1975 added to online archive

The Future

  • Future photos: Philmont will continue to add the most recent summer’s photos by September of each year.