WILLIAM HENRY JACKSON 3801. Cliff Ruin, Mancos Canon, Colorado Sept 10, 1874 Albumen print 5x8" Boudoir Card ASG# WHJ/3663 Front is printed The W. H. Jackson Photo Co Denver, Colo. this has the Chain and Hardy backmark c.1885 with Fred Mazzula's safe combinations verso.

William Henry Jackson made the first photographs of the ruins at Mancos Canyon and nearby Mesa Verde. Here is his most famous view of what became known as Two Story House, a nine-room ruin on the extreme east end of Moccasin Mesa (directly east of Chapin Mesa). With Moss leading the way, Jackson took the first photographs of a cliff dwelling in the Mesa Verde region.

The tones on this albumen print are very rich and dark, physically it is in rough shape with three creases, overall mild wear, soiling and abrasions. However there is an additional bit of history noted on the back which might be termed ephemera. On the verso of the print are various combinations to Fred Mazzula's secret room safe noting that this was kept with the keys. Mazzula was one of the great collectors of Jacksons work and much of his collection is at the Amon Carter Museum.

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 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. In the mid 1880s he entered into a distribution agreement with Chain and Hardy in Denver.

Fair. Very rich tones, mild wear, bends in the print and card