• About the Work of Art

• Activities for Chipeta Falls—Black Cañon of the Gunnison

  
  

Born in Keeseville, New York, in 1843, William Henry Jackson’s photographic career began when, at age fifteen, he worked retouching photographs. At the onset of the Civil War, Jackson was drafted into the Union Army. In 1863 he went to Vermont, working in Style’s Photographic Gallery in Burlington. In the spring of 1866, Jackson decided to follow Horace Greeley’s advice and go west. In Nebraska City, Nebraska Territory, he was hired to work as a bullwhacker for a freighting outfit bound for the gold fields of Montana. After returning from the West, he worked at odd jobs, making his way to Omaha, where he and his brother started a photography business. While there, he took some of the first photographs of the region’s Native American tribes, including the Pawnees, Omahas, Winnebagos, and Osages. These photographic negatives later formed the foundation of a collection for the Bureau of American Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution.

In 1869 he won a lucrative contract from the new Union Pacific Railroad to photograph views along the rail lines. A year later, Dr. Ferdinand Hayden asked Jackson to join the U.S. Geological Survey of the Territories, including Yellowstone, Mesa Verde, the Colorado mountains, and pueblos in the Southwest. Realizing that photographs raised invaluable public support for the continuation of funding for the government survey teams, Hayden hired Jackson to document activities of the Hayden Survey for its duration, 1870–78.

During the survey expeditions, Jackson often worked closely with the painter Thomas Moran, sharing ideas about composition and lighting. Jackson’s photographs of Yellowstone, along with illustrations by Moran, influenced Congress’ 1872 designation of Yellowstone as the first national park.

That same year, Jackson ventured with the Hayden expedition to the Colorado Rockies to locate and make the first photographs of the Mount of the Holy Cross. This peak had become legendary because it had fissures at its summit that, when filled with snow, created an outline of a perfect cross. Jackson’s photographs of the peak created a swell of interest in eastern travelers eager to view the wonders of the West. The cross was viewed as justification of the philosophy of Manifest Destiny.

Throughout much of his career, Jackson had to photograph using the difficult collodian wet-plate process, which required the use of glass plate negatives that had to be sensitized and developed on the spot. This meant carrying a darkroom and chemicals wherever he went. Jackson was a master of the process, often using mammoth plates, which produced a twenty-by-twenty-four-inch negative, to best reflect the grandeur of the American West.

In the 1880s Jackson accepted commissions to create a series of tourist guidebook pictures for various railroad companies. The railroads were eager to stimulate travel along their routes and knew Jackson’s photographs would sell the adventure. The photographs celebrated the railroads’ access to remote places and burgeoning resort towns, enticing prospective vacationers and settlers. Jackson’s rail shots are some of his most famous.

From 1894 to 1896 Jackson traveled to Europe, Africa, India, Australia, Japan, and Russia. The photographs from these travels were published in Harper’s Weekly and reached a wide audience. In 1897 Jackson acquired part interest in the Detroit Publishing Company, which published and distributed his photographs widely. At age ninety-three he was commissioned to paint four large murals of the early West to memorialize the geological surveys for the Department of the Interior, capping a long and productive career.

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