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High up in the Sierra Nevada mountains of Yosemite National Park in California, in 1931, Osta Arminta (Cain) Miner rests along the Mist Trail at the top section of the dramatic 317-foot Vernal Fall.
Osta's husband, William Allen Miner, handwrote this caption on the back of this image: "Vernal Falls over twice as high as Niagra. in Yosemite Valley. We climbed hundreds of tiresome steps to get to the top of them where a beautiful lake lay in the basin of solid rock."
Off and on during the late 1910s, and again from about 1920 to their deaths, the Miners made their home in Southern California, in the outskirts of Pasadena. Will and Osta enjoyed camping vacations throughout the southwestern United States, as shown by their snapshots sent to loved ones, taken in Arizona, Colorado and Nevada. The couple also resided over the years in El Monte and Rosemead, CA, where Will worked as a carpenter and house contractor during a time when these communities were booming in their growth as suburbs of Los Angeles.
It was a much different lifestyle than the rural farms where each had grown up, Will near Nineveh in Greene County, PA and Osta just over the state line in Hundred, WV. In an interesting twist, Will’s brother Harry Orlan Miner married Osta’s sister Armena Viancy Cain and dwelled in Washington, PA.
See more of their photographs in the Minerd.com “Out West Album.”