Everyone agrees you don’t need to know everything; just the important things. but therein lies the problem. What’s important? How much detail is too much detail? How trivial is trivial?
I recently came across this curious photograph, and the speculation and investigation is triggered. I marveled at how much effort it takes to investigate, validate and quantify even one instant in time. This particular instant probably isn’t very significant, but it’s pretty weird that it ever happened at all, let alone saved by an early photographer and discussed over a century later. Below are the salient details, summarized from an article in the Sheboygan Press.
Date Taken: between 1890 and 1900
Photographer: Unknown
Location: Sheboygan, Wisconsin, at Eighth Street and Indiana Avenue
Description
In the photo, a dead horse lies in the street, roped off with string tied to stakes in the dirt road. A man in a top hat, bow tie and jacket sits on top of the horse, looking north toward the Eighth Street bridge and people in the background are standing still, looking toward the camera.
The photo clearly shows the entry to the Eighth Street Bridge and what is probably the Evergreen City Hotel and Saloon on the northeast corner of the intersection, near where the C. Reiss Coal building is now. In the background is a brick and lime business and other unidentified buildings on the banks of the Sheboygan River.
Other Markings
The photo does say, on the back, that it was taken at Eighth Street and Indiana Avenue, and that it’s of a man sitting on a dead horse.
Expert Opinions
"I always just assumed it was taken as a joke or something like that. I was never able to find out anything about it." — Bill Wangemann, Sheboygan city historian
"I don’t think we have any idea. There’s no name on it, nothing." — Kathy Jeske, Sheboygan County Historical Research Center
If anyone knows anything about the origin of the photo or has information about the scene, contact Janet Ortegon at 920-453-5121 or jortegon@sheboygan-press.com.
At the height of it’s notoriery, approximately 300 blogs had mentioned the photo. No entry appears in Wikipedia Commons for this photo…yet.
The Intersection Point 