Let me introduce myself to you. My name is Gary O'Toole and I'm known as Nevada's very own Cowboy Photographer. I'm a graduate of Famous Photographers School in New York. I have been a photographer since 1963, over 45 years now, during which I have traveled all across the United States shooting much of the scenery in this beautiful country. I have over 1.2 million photographs in file, thousands of which have been on exhibition in eight different states over the years. I call that exhibit, "My America the Beautiful".

But, it wasn't until I came to Nevada some twenty years ago, that I fell in love with the wild beauty of the Nevada landscape. I fell in love with the spirit of Nevada with it's legends of gunfighters, ranchers, old miners and mining camps turned ghost towns and the history of the indians that roamed the land. Roaming the desert and those ghost towns long desserted, I could feel the presence of the settlers looking for a new beginning, families packing up all their belongings in covered wagons and traveling across a dry and desolate land in hopes of cutting out a life in this rugged and hostile land.

You can sit on a ruins of an old wall, or lean against a door post that was once the entrance to a family home and if you are very quiet, and the wind starts to blow, you can almost hear the sounds of a hundred years ago. You can look off in the distance and almost see a stagecoach making it's way in the valley far below. This is "Nevada".

Many of my photographs have been taken while sitting in the saddle of my mustang horse, Sunrise. He is my faithful companion and friend. Many a trip across the desert winding through the hills and valleys have produced the fruits of this old cowboy's labor.

I hope that you will enjoy this exhibit as much as I have enjoyed bringing it to you. If you can find one photograph, and say "That's beautiful", then I know I have received payment in full measure for the work I've done..

Thank you,

Gary O'Toole
The Cowboy Photographer