As the Park City Museum’s research and digital services and media coordinator, Dalton Gackle is well-versed in the city’s history as well as the tens of thousands of historic photographs housed by the museum.
The new book he’s put together could only be 125 pages, so Gackle had his work cut out to narrow down which photos he thought did the best job of telling Park City’s story within the publisher’s constraints.
“One of the more difficult parts of the process was just narrowing down what I wanted to talk about and have the images of,” Gackle said. “I can't really say how I ended up coming down to the ones I came down to. It’s a little bit of an aesthetic thing where some of the photos were just like really amazing and I couldn't pass up putting them in the book. And others were like, well, I need to talk about this thing. So, I should have at least an image or two about this. Yeah, I got I certainly could have included 100 more if I really wanted to.”
Because the book was written by Gackle, who is a museum staff member, all proceeds will go directly to the Park City Museum. It’s the latest in a series titled “Images of America.”
“They reached out to the museum, and they had reached out before,” Gackle explained. “And for whatever reason, people in the past hadn't wanted to write a book. But this time around, I thought the timing would be good. And it would be a great way to showcase a lot of our great images that we have at the museum and have more of a general history book that didn't really take too much of people's time.”
The book will be released June 20 and will be available at the museum and online. He also has several lectures and book signings planned, including June 22 at the Museum’s Education and Collection Center from 5 to 6 pm., July 1 at Dolly’s bookstore and in August at the Kimball Junction library.
