Herman A. Darms

Herman Darms was born to Swiss immigrant parents Baldazar and Elizabeth Darms. He lived in Yountville, California before coming to the Yukon in 1898. He established the Darms Printing Company on Third Street in Dawson in 1901.¹⁾ The business was located in the Alaska Commercial Company building.²⁾ In 1902, Dawson businessmen hired him to take photographs of their businesses and they posed in front of their establishments.³⁾ Many of these photographs are held at the Dawson City Museum.

Darms may have learned his photography skills from Lorenze E. Robertson whose photographs he published in 1903. In the spring of 1904, Darms toured Yukon mining claims and an account of the trip was published in the Daily Evening Star (Whitehorse). He published The Yukon souvenir booklet in January 1905. It was intended to be a weekly publication and several versions were published in 1905. In July, Darms travelled with the American Institute of Mining Engineers to some mining sites. In the same month he visited the North American Transportation and Trading (NAT&T) operations on Miller and Glacier creeks.⁴⁾ The Yukon Archives has a collection of Darms’ panoramic photos of the Klondike goldfields.