09/17/2026
COLLECTION’S CORNER
Why saved photos are critical to history
By David Williams
You never know what will change! Saving your pho-
tos isn’t just a hobby or a collec-tion of personal memories. It’s physical evidence of history itself. With the upcoming National Save Your Photo Day on Sunday, Sept. 27, we look at why saving your photos and digitally upload-ing them can be important.
For example, consider a photo of Lovers Lane on what was then the Kansas State Agricultural College. Lovers Lane began life at KSAC as a campus footpath in 1881. In the photo, there are cut stone posts that, according to the KSAC paper, The Industri-alist, were placed there in 1899 to match “the east entrance to the main drive.” In 1908, a cinder walk, a walking path paved with packed cinders, was constructed. Various student publications mention numerous events at this location. A 1913 Kansas Aggie ar-ticle joked about speed-limit signs being posted on Lovers Lane, foreshadowing its conversion from a footpath to a road. The maple trees in the photo were cut down and turned into firewood in 1918 to help pay for the widening and gravel surfacing of the road.
The president’s residence on the Kansas State University campus was constructed along the road in 1923. Lovers Lane continued to be a location of social gatherings for several decades. In 1960, Justin Hall was constructed; this was also around the time that KSAC changed its name to Kansas State University. In 1981, Bluemont Hall — named for Bluemont Central College, which was
converted to KSAC — was constructed along the lane. In 2016, Lovers Lane underwent its latest change by having its east exit onto North Manhattan Avenue shifted to the north to make room for the College of Business Building.
How does the history of one of K-State’s oldest pathways relate to Save Your Photo Day? What makes it important to you? It’s important because we know of social gatherings, plays, picnics, and other events along this path, and the only evidence of these events seems to be newspaper articles. It seems there are no photos of these many events.
Look through your photo al-bums. How many of those old photographs have little to no writ-ing on them? Who are the peo-ple in the pictures? What did they do? What was the event? Sure, you can ask someone who might have been there at the time, yet they won’t always be around to answer.
By collecting those stories and photos and digitally backing them up, we can preserve history. We can ensure that future gener-ations have more than just “word of mouth” and “written testimony” to research and learn about the past. They will, with those pho-tos, have a window in which to witness history itself.
So digitally back up your photos, folks. Maybe take September 27 this year to make a day of it to preserve your family and friends’ history for those who come after us.
David Williams is a Midwest native, growing up mostly in
the Black Hills of South Dakota.
He found himself in Manhattan, Kansas, after joining the Army and being stationed at Fort Riley in 2021. In 2023, he was medically retired, and he enrolled in fashion studies at Kansas State University. He is also pursuing a Certificate in Museum Studies with the goal of working with textile collections in museums. Williams joined the team of the Riley County Historical Museum as an intern during the 2026 summer semester.
