Frank S. Matsura

[1] More than 1,800 of his frontier-era photographs and glass plate negatives have been preserved by the Okanogan County Historical Society and Washington State University.

[5] In 1903, he answered an ad in a Seattle newspaper for a cook's helper and laundryman placed by Jesse Dillabough, owner of the Elliott Hotel in Conconully, Washington, and was hired.

His photographic subjects were wide and varied and included portraits, infrastructure projects such as the construction of Conconully Dam, Native Americans, celebrations and parades, stage coaches, riverboats, farming and ranching, and virtually all aspects of the lives of the people of Okanogan county.

The Okanogan Commercial Club distributed his work in brochures and postcards, and several images were exhibited at the Alaska–Yukon–Pacific Exposition (AYPE) of 1909 in Seattle, where they attracted favorable notice.

Matsura candidly disclosed that he suffered from tuberculosis, but Okanogan was profoundly shocked when he died suddenly on June 16, 1913, at the age of only 39.

[13] A newspaper article[14] which appeared in the June 20, 1913 edition of the Okanogan Independent states in part: A shadow of sorrow was cast over the community early in the week by the sudden death on Monday night of Frank S. Matsura, the Japanese photographer who has been a part and parcel of the city ever since its establishment seven years ago....

He came from a wealthy and aristocratic family in Japan.Matsura was buried in Okanogan and much of his work went to a close friend, Judge William Compton Brown.

Brown ultimately donated it to the Washington State University archives, which has catalogued the images and placed a valuable collection on the internet.

In 2002, Matsura was mentioned in the last page of "Ten no Taka" ("Sky Hawk") as a photographer of indigenous peoples of the United States.