WILLIAM HENRY JACKSON 245. Within The Gates of the Grand River, Glenwood Extension, D & R.G.R.R., Ca, 1884 Albumen Print 16.5x20.5 ASG# WHJ/2237

William Henry Jackson worked for the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad between 1882-1884 where the owners had a train car for Jackson to use as a darkroom and to photograph views throughout their routes in Colorado. This view near Aspen, CO. shows the train on a bend of the Grand or Colorado River.

William Henry Jackson (1843-1942) trained as an illustrator and painter before picking up the camera shortly after the Civil War. He worked as a bullwhacker before setting up his first photography studio in Omaha. By 1867 he was taking pictures of the local Pawnee Indians. In 1869 he was taking landscape views along the route of the Union Pacific Railroad. The scientist and Geologic Survey leader, F.V. Hayden, met Jackson at this time and hired him to be the official photographer of the Hayden Survey. Jackson's photographs of Yellowstone from the early 1870s aided in its becoming the nation's first National Park. In 1879, his work for the Hayden survey ended and he opened a studio in Denver. Jackson's landscape/railroad work made in Colorado for the railroad companies in the 1880s was the primary source of the views he distributed from his Denver studio in the 1880s. By then Jackson had become the most famous photographer in America and like Carleton Watkins and Eadward Muybridge, one of a handful of artists who used mammoth plate negatives.

Poor. Rich tones but print is heavily yellowed with tears and smaller spots of emulsion loss. Light stock whitish mount shows mild wear, stains