Details

Title

Alpine Pass, Colorado

Artist/Maker

William Henry Jackson (American, 1843–1942)

Date

ca. 1880

Medium

Albumen silver print

Dimensions

Contact the museum for more information

Credit

Gift of Mrs. Everett McDonnell

Accession #

76.105

On View

Currently not on view

Born in Keeseville, New York, Jackson was an ambitious entrepreneur who had a profound influence on the development of commercial landscape photography. Both a photographer and painter, he was commissioned to photograph the Rocky Mountain countryside for Francis V. Hayden’s Geological and Geographic Survey of the Territories in 1870. This project lasted eight summers, and allowed Jackson to photograph extensively throughout the American West. After establishing his Denver studio in 1880, he was offered commissions by Western railroad companies to record the great vistas and natural wonders along routes through the Rockies. Supplied with his own gear-toting locomotive by the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, Jackson effectively juxtaposed the drama of the rugged Western landscape with the human ingenuity and technological progress represented by the railroad lines.

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