From the March 15, 1903, Anaconda Standard. The vignettes are Ross Castle, Killarney (upper right) and The Vale of Avoca (lower left). The artist, Willis Hale Thorndike, was born on Feb. 8, 1872 in Stockton, California, and studied art in San Francisco, Paris and New York. He began his career with the San Francisco Chronicle in 1890. By about 1901 he was in Anaconda, living at the Montana Hotel and working as an illustrator for the Anaconda Standard. He appears to have met and married Irene Hunsicker in Anaconda, and they lived there until they left for New York on January 3, 1904. Back east, Thorndike worked for the New York Herald and Baltimore Sun until 1915 when he returned to California. He worked as a political cartoonist in Los Angeles from 1928 until his death there on March 18, 1940.
