First, the leaning pine tree that appears in one of the negatives. Well, this tree is not just a random tree that Ansel Adams took a liking to. In fact, this tree is a famous landmark in Yosemite national park. The park had hundreds of thousands visitors in the 1920s and the pine tree captured on the negative happened to be one of its most visited sites. Because the tree was such a popular symbol of Yosemite, a lot of the photographers, not just Ansel Adams are known to have taken photographs of it.
Second, the handwriting on the envelopes, as you read, some envelopes have a place name written on them. For example, names of famous Yosemite landmarks, but the person who wrote the names of the locations on the envelopes did not spell some of them correctly. Now, Virginia Adams grew up in Yosemite, her father was an artist to have an art studio in the park. So, she knew Yosemite very well. Does it really make sense that she would misspell place names familiar to her since childhood?
Third, about fire damage to the negatives, the process that photographers used to create negatives in the 1920s was dangerous. It involved using highly flammable chemicals and these chemicals could cause the fire to start very easily. So, a fire in a photographer’s studio was not an unusual occurrence in those days, and a great number of professional photographers had work that was damaged by fire.