Buddha Arena

1930’s ‘The Chief’ Wooden Oshkosh Suitcase.

1930′s Wyandotte Boattail Roadster Sports Car 

<strong>Susie Keef Smith and her camera with the desert lily she was photographing in the late 1920s. Her cousin, Lula Mae Graves, captured this scene, which appears in a new book and exhibit called Postcards from Mecca: The California Desert Photographs of Susie Keef Smith and Lula Mae Graves.</strong>

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY WARNER GARVES COLLECTION https://www.palmspringslife.com/history/desert-history-coachella-valley/

Susie Keef Smith Fry was born in 1900 on a ranch near what is now Los Angeles, later moving with her parents James & Nellie to a ranch near the Salton Sea in 1916. Susie served as the postmaster for the town of Mecca, California for almost a decade starting in 1926. She took desert life pictures, and made postcards from these pictures to sell on the spinner rack in the post office. She was later joined by her younger cousin Lula Mae Johnson. They traveled all over remote desert areas to document desert life. When Susie died in 1988, her photographs were nearly lost forever when a public administrator of her estate tossed them into the trash with the rest of her belongings. The pictures were saved, and Smith's images, as well as pictures taken by cousin Lula Mae, are featured in the book Postcards from Mecca, The California Desert Photographs of Susie Keef Smith and Lula Mae Graves, 1916-1936.

Susie Keef Smith Fry

Birth

15 Jul 1900

Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, California, USA

Death

20 Feb 1988 (aged 87)

Leucadia, San Diego County, California, USA