Ned Hilton's Nevada City Drawings: 

Solving a Historical Mystery

By Bernard Zimmerman

Part 1: The Mystery

In the fall of 2024, Nevada County Historical Landmarks Commissioner Jerry Martini sent me a March 23, 1934 article from the Nevada County Nugget, a newspaper then published locally.(1 )The article reported that Ned Hilton, an artist working for the Federal Public Works of Art Project, was in Nevada County to prepare "a series of drawings of points of interest in Nevada County [which] will be made as part of a permanent pictorial record."(2) He also sent me a link to a U.S. General Services Administration [GSA] website which contains information about the "pictorial record" and states that the Hilton drawings are at the San Francisco Fine Arts Museum.(3) Jerry was curious whether they could be seen, and I told him I would follow up. I sent an email to the Museum with a link to the GSA site and received a reply that the Museum did not have the Hilton artwork. Not easily put off, I visited the Museum and was told by a staff member, who searched the Museum database in my presence, that the Museum had no such drawings. Much to my surprise, two months later I received an email from the Museum that it had 30 of his drawings and I could arrange for a viewing. With the assistance of curator Alice Timmins, I was able to view 15 of the drawings on June 12, 2025.(4)

While waiting for the opportunity to view the sketches, Jerry and I researched Ned Hilton so I could include a biographical sketch in this article. When I googled Ned Hilton, the first hit was on askART, a site which contains information about thousands of artists and facilitates the sale of their art.(5) Its biography states that Ned Hilton, a cartoonist and artist, was born in Iowa in 1904 and died in San Bernardino, California in 1989. The GSA website on which Hilton's art is catalogued lists the same date of death. A Find a Grave check confirmed those details about an Edward "Ned" Hilton.(6) But further research disclosed that a prominent cartoonist named Ned Hilton was born in Alhambra, California in 1904 and died in New York City in 1967. His New York Times obituary states that for about 30 years, his work had been featured in such publications as Life, Look and Esquire magazines.(7) I asked Perplexity, an AI assisted search engine, for a biography of the artist Ned Hilton, and it confirmed the information on the askART site.(8) So we were faced with a mystery: were there two artists named Ned Hilton, both born in 1904, whose biographies had been conflated? An email query to askART was not productive. 

Jerry then found an article by Alex Jay on the ComicStripHistory website, which strongly supported the notion that the Ned Hilton who died in 1967 was the one who had worked in Nevada County.(9) After substantial further research, including an afternoon in the San Francisco Main Public Library assisted by librarian Jason Gibbs, we concluded that the Ned Hilton who died in San Bernardino in 1989 was not an artist but a truck driver for a lumber company who was erroneously receiving credit for the other Ned Hilton's art. Finally, I discovered a news report in the Nugget that mentioned that the artist Ned Hilton's mother, Lillian Aitkin, was from Nevada City.(10)

Part 2: The Artist

Edward Aitken "Ned" Hilton was born in Alhambra, California on March 4, 1904, to Edward and Lillian [nee Aitken] Hilton. His father died in 1912. Ned taught himself to draw at a boys camp helped by an older boy, a good cartoonist.  He began publishing his drawings. At age 14, one of his cartoons was published in the San Francisco Chronicle. Soon thereafter, he and his mother moved to New Jersey, where she remarried. At age 15, he had cartoons published in the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper. His cartoons appeared in several magazines, including Life and Judge. Newly married, in 1928 he returned to California with his wife and settled down in Sausalito. They were soon joined by baby Edward. Ned joined the staff of the Sausalito News as a cartoonist and reporter. He continued to provide cartoons for other publications in the Bay Area, cover art for magazines, such as National Motorist, and was a regular contributor to The San Franciscan magazine.

In early 1934, Hilton was appointed to the Depression-era Federal Public Works of Art Project [the Project] to act as a roving pictorial reporter. "The Public Works of Art Project was organized on December 8, 1933.... The objective of the Project was to give artists employment at craftsmen’s wages in the embellishment of public property with works of art."(11) One of its best known works is the Coit Tower Murals in San Francisco. It was for the Project that Hilton traveled to Nevada City in March 1934.(12)

After completing his work in Nevada County, in May Hilton returned to Sausalito(13), then moved to New York City in June 1934. He worked at Esquire magazine for three years. He became a long time regular contributor to the New Yorker magazine and produced art for many other magazines, including Collier’s, The Saturday Evening Post and Look.(14) He was a founding member and president of the Cartoonists Guild of America, in which capacity he advocated for better pay for cartoonists. In 1936, Hilton and other cartoonists were arrested for picketing outside a magazine. Their pencils were confiscated and they were detained for five hours at a police station, then four hours in Night Court, before the charges were dismissed. During World War II, he enlisted in the army, serving as a sergeant stationed in El Paso, Texas. He passed away in New York City in 1967, and is buried in the Long Island National Cemetery, a military cemetery.(15)

Part 3: The Art

GSA is the custodian of the nation's federally funded art. Its Fine Arts Collection includes the works of the Project.(16) In 1943, many of the Hilton drawings were placed on loan with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, where they are curated as part of the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts Collection. The Achenbach has 30 Hilton drawings, 20 of which are scenes of Nevada or Sierra Counties. The rest are Bay Area scenes. The Nevada County drawings are titled: Oldest Brick Building in North San Juan, California; Old Buildings, Nevada City, California; Old Building, Deer Creek, near Nevada City, California; Central Mine, Lava Cap, Nevada County, California; Old Brick Building, North San Juan, California; Providence Mine, near Nevada City, California; Down the Shaft, Queen Lil Mine near Nevada City, California; Top of the Chute, Queen Lil Mine near Nevada City, California; Central Mine, Lava Cap, Nevada County, California; At Central Mine, Lava Cap, California; Upgrade, Lava Cap, California.

Photographs of the 30 drawings can be seen here.

On the back of many of the drawings, Hilton added a brief note. Following this article is a chart which lists all the drawings by their accession number and title and includes Hilton's notes, as best I could decipher them with a magnifying glass. Hilton's tiny handwriting was sometimes difficult to read and unfortunately someone had attached tape to the upper corners of the back of many if the drawings, which obscured some of the writing.

Hilton produced more Nevada County art than is currently in the Achenbach collection. A Nugget article reports that in April, Hilton forwarded a number of his sketches to Washington for an upcoming exhibit. Included in the description of that artwork are “a colored drawing of Sam Kee's laundry on Commercial Street; [and] the oldest house in Nevada City, the Lester property on Spring Street."(17) Neither of these drawings appear to be part of the GSA collection housed in San Francisco. The Nugget also reported that Hilton sent a watercolor painting of the "Castle" [presumably the Red Castle on Prospect St.] to Mrs. Belle Douglas, who had been his guide while he worked in the County.(18) Belle Douglas was born in Nevada City in 1868, the daughter of Ianthus Rolfe, one of the founders of the Nevada City Democrat newspaper. She was considered an authority on Nevada County history. (19)The Landmarks Commission is trying to track down the current whereabouts of that painting. If you have any information about it, please call 530-264-0115 or email info@nevadacountylandmarks.com.

1 I am indebted to Jerry for his excellent research contributions to this article.

2 Nevada City Nugget, March 23, 1934, p. 1.

3 https://art.gsa.gov/sites/2060023/-/objects/list?page=18&sort=primaryMakerAlpha-asc

4 The Museum limits visitors to 15 drawings per visit, and a visit takes months to schedule.

5 https://www.askart.com/artist/Ned_Hilton/111437/Ned_Hilton.aspx viewed April 7, 2025.

6 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/79176286/edward-hilton viewed April 7, 2025.

7 timesmachine.nytimes.com, p. 24, viewed April 7, 2025.

8 https://www.perplexity.ai/search/write-a-biographical-article-a-7ixCGDeMTYSPAwhALrQjBA

9 Jay, Alex, Ink-Slinger Profile of Ned Hilton available at  https://comicstriphistory.com/?s=ned+hilton&cat=all&year=All+Years&monthnum=All+Months&order=desc&posts_per_page=10&post_status=publish&orderby=publish_date&exact-match=1 viewed April 18, 2025. This article contains a wealth of biographical information about Ned Hilton as well as images of his art..

10 Nevada City Nugget, July 12, 1935, p. 4.

11 Bruce, Edward, National Exhibition of Art By The Public Works Of Art Project, April 24, 1934 to May 20, 1934, prepared by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, p. 2.

12 This Project operated for about 6 months, ending in June 1934. During the Depression, the federal government operated several other public art projects, the most prominent of which was the WPA Federal Art Project which lasted about 8 years. https://home.treasury.gov/about/history/collection/paintings/wpa-art-collection viewed April 27, 2025.

13 Sausalito News, May 18, 1934, p. 5.

14 https://mikelynchcartoons.blogspot.com/2021/06/from-dick-buchanan-files-ned-hilton-gag.html viewed April 27, 2025. This site contains a collection of Hilton's cartoons.

15 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/2704049/ned-hilton viewed April 21, 2025.

16 https://art.gsa.gov/sites/2060023/-/objects/list?page=18&sort=primaryMakerAlpha-asc

17 Nevada City Nugget, April 2, 1934, p.  1.

18 Nevada City Nugget, May 18, 1934, p.  5.

19 Sacramento Bee, December 25, 1942, p. 6.