Wilson A. Bentley - The Snowflake Man

If you exit Interstate 89 in Vermont where it crosses US Route 2 in Richmond, head east a couple of miles to the center of town and turn north, you'll soon come to the village of Jericho Center. Like many places in New England with "Center" in their name, the village is several miles away from Jericho and its collection of stores and schools further north on Route 15. As you pass by the town green, you'll see a small historical marker noting that the village was the home of Wilson A. "Snowflake" Bentley, still known over 75 years after his death as the first person to take pictures of snowflakes.

Bentley took over 5,000 photographs of snowflakes using a bellows camera connected to a microscope. He began taking these photos in 1885, and before he died, they had caught the interest and imagination of people all over the world. While he was very objective in his passion to collect and photograph the huge variety of snowflakes, he could be poetic in his descriptions, describing his subjects as "tiny miracles of beauty" and "ice flowers."

Bentley and his photographs have become a cottage industry in Jericho, with a gift shop and chocolate shop located in town and online (see the links after the book listings).

Bentley was a farmer all his life and never traveled far from Jericho. His snowflake photographs were published in a monograph co-authored by atmospheric physicist William Jackson Humphries of the U.S. Weather Bureau. The monograph contained 2,500 snowflake photos. This monograph is what Jackson appears to be viewing in the photograph to the left.

Bentley was the author of the article "Snow" in the 14th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Photographs in this lens are all in the public domain.