On August 22, 1891, a 17-year-old Lou Henry, the future First Lady of the United States, posed with a rifle on a donkey outside Richard E. Nickel’s general store in Acton.

Image in the National Archives; date of photograph from the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum. (SCV History)

The photo, taken by Nickel himself, is now preserved in the National Archives, with its date confirmed by the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum.

That summer, Lou Henry camped with her father, Charles Henry, at nearby Mount Gleason to the south. The Iowa-born teenager, who would later marry President Herbert Hoover in 1899, was already developing the love of the outdoors and independent spirit that would shape her life.

First Lady Lou Henry Hoover, ca. 1928 (Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum)

Lou Henry went on to become the first woman in America to earn a geology degree, travel the world with her husband, support humanitarian relief during two world wars, and play a transformative role as First Lady, from restoring the White House to championing Girl Scouts and women’s athletics.

Her Acton summers were an early chapter in a lifetime of adventure. Lou later recalled of her parents: “They would not want me to stay meekly at home.”

By the time he photographed Lou in 1891, Richard E. Nickel had already established himself as Acton’s leading citizen.

After moving the old Soledad Post Office from Ravenna in 1887, he built his general store on Crown Valley Road, where he also lived upstairs.

Nickel became Acton’s first official postmaster in 1888 and went on to build the Acton Hotel, launch the town’s first water company, and found the “Acton Rooster” just one month before taking Henry’s photo in July 1891, the Santa Clarita Valley area’s first newspaper, which he published monthly for the next 22 years.

Read Lou Henry’s own recollections of her Acton summers here.

To read yesterday’s Today in SCV History, click here.

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