American photographer Glenn Augustus Davis was born March 22, 1894 in Portland, Oregon. He attended school in Oregon and Washington prior to working in the lumber camps and saw mills of Washington and British Columbia. He served in the US Army from 1915 to 1920. He was a member of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) on the Western Front in France during World War I. In the years following the war, Davis returned to the US and worked as a cook, a cotton grower, and a seaman before following his passion for photography.

Harry A. Brown was born in Independence, Missouri in 1912. Brown moved to Las Vegas, Nevada with his wife in 1934 during the Great Depression in order to start working on the construction of Boulder Dam. Brown continued his occupation as a carpenter throughout the years while living in Las Vegas and resided in several properties with his family in Las Vegas and North Las Vegas.