Noah H. Rose began as a typesetter. He became a photographer in Texas around the turn of the century. As he made his own photos of interesting and historical points and people of the southwest, he supplemented these pictures with those from other collections. Eventually he began to sell prints of these pictures and used this collection to sustain him in his later years. By 1930, Mr. Rose began to supply magazines with authentic photographs and prints of the southwest and related topics. Eventually, he published Album of Gunfighters which contains 300 pictures of outlaws and lawmen of the west. Album of Gunfighters was first published with the assistance of J. Marvin Hunter, a long-time friend of Mr. Rose; that was in 1951, just before Mr. Rose died on January 25, 1952.

The Noah H. Rose Collection was purchased by the Western History Collections in 1969.