Every week, I take a look at old newspapers pulled from Chronicling America by Ed Summers’ 100 Years Ago Today feed. Sometimes my gaze is caught by events of the day—telephones, auto accidents, odd notions of gender roles. Just about every week I stare at the magazine section of the front page of The San Francisco Sunday Call*. Often I don’t know how to interpret these—do they really have something to do with the news of the week?

The Girl of the Butterflies, San Francisco Sunday Call, August 23, 1908

This week’s cover is particularly beautiful: The Girl of the Butterflies. So many questions arise from one simple image from August 23, 1908: Were there really so many butterflies in San Francisco 100 years ago? Would a woman really go netting in such a costume? What do butterflies have to do with anything? The wonderful thing about peering into the past is that it opens more questions than answers.

*The San Francisco Call wikipedia entry is a good start but needs some work.