Carrie Arnold’s Pen and Ink Holidays

December 11, 2025

By Leslie Waggener

When Denver attorney Bill Lagos wanted to send holiday greetings to friends and family, he didn’t reach for store-bought cards with generic winter scenes. Instead, he commissioned elegant pen-and-ink drawings of the Wyoming mining towns where he grew up—Hartville, where he was born in 1922, and Sunrise, where he attended school during the Depression. Artist Carrie Arnold brought these Wyoming places to life.

Between 1971 and 1997, Arnold crafted a remarkable series of Wyoming winter scenes for Lagos, expanding beyond Hartville and Sunrise to include Guernsey, Laramie, and other communities across the state. These weren’t simply pretty pictures—they were carefully researched historical documents rendered in graceful lines and animated by Arnold’s signature touch: people going about their daily lives.

pen and ink drawing of group of people standing chatting in the middlw of a street lined with false-fronted buildings — Main Street of Hartville. Founded during an 1881 copper boom, the town was a civilian center for nearby mining camps, offering saloons, an opera house, and entertainment not permitted in the company town of Sunrise. Courtesy American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

Carrie Arnold’s journey to becoming the artist behind these Wyoming scenes was anything but conventional. Born near Greeley, Colorado in 1944, she attended the University of Northern Colorado before moving to Denver in 1965. There, she founded a successful petroleum map business—a decidedly technical venture she and her husband sold in 1972.

But Arnold’s true passions lay in Western history and art. She had begun painting portraits in high school and later developed her distinctive style as a pen-and-ink illustrator for Western books and cookbooks.

Arnold’s process was meticulous. Working from old photographs, she would visit Wyoming sites and talk with Wyoming natives to ensure historical accuracy. Her drawings captured Hartville and Sunrise in overview, along with intimate views of the old jail, schools, churches, the YMCA, and historic homes. Each building was rendered with precision, but never felt sterile or lifeless.

pen and ink drawing of three-story brick building with arched entry at the scond floor. A number of adults are standing and walking on the sidewalk in front, and there is snow on the ground and roof — Sunrise YMCA. Unlike neighboring Hartville, the company town of Sunrise offered recreational facilities like the YMCA rather than the saloons and opera houses of its civilian counterpart. Courtesy American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

That’s because she understood something essential: buildings don’t exist in isolation. In her drawings, people walk down snowy streets, gather outside churches, and go about their business. These small human details transformed historical documentation into living memories, making viewers feel they could step into these Wyoming winter scenes and join the townspeople of decades past.

Through Arnold’s careful pen work, Wyoming’s frontier mining towns came alive again each December, their streets filled with snow and the shadows of people who once called them home.

pen and ink drawing of two miners in work clothes standing on a snowy street with a bungalow-style stone building on a rise in the background — Sunrise Hospital. The facility served workers at the Sunrise Mine, which operated from 1899 to 1980 as the primary iron source for the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. Courtesy American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

The Carrie Arnold papers are housed at the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming in Laramie.