William Henry Jackson's stunning photographs of the Colorado Rockies, Mesa Verde, the Tetons, Yosemite, and Yellowstone made a mark not only on the history of photography but also on the history of the nation. A thorough and well-researched yet emphatically readable biography. William Henry Jackson: Framing the Frontier features more than 100 photographs illustrating Jackson's remarkable legacy.

To California And Return, 1866-1867; And With The Hayden Surveys To The Central Rockies, 1873, And To The Utes And Cliff Dwellings, 1874.

William Henry Jackson was an explorer, photographer, and artist. He is also one of those most often overlooked figures of the American West. His larger claim to fame involves his repeated forays into the western lands of nineteenth-century America as a photographer. Jackson’s life spanned multiple incarnations of the American West. In a sense, he played a singular role in revealing the West to eastern Americans. While others opened the frontier with the axe and the rifle, Jackson did so with his collection of cameras. He dispelled the geological myths through a lens no one could deny or match. His wet plate collodion prints not only helped to reframe the nation’s image of the West, but they also enticed businessmen, investors, scientists, and even tourists to venture into the western regions of the United States. Prior to Jackson’s widely circulated photographs, the American West was little understood and unmapped—mysterious lands that required a camera and a cameraman to reveal their secrets and, ultimately, provide the first photographic record of such exotic destinations as Yellowstone, Mesa Verde, and the Rocky Mountains. Jackson’s story was long and his life full, as he lived to the enviable age of 99. This biography presents the good, bad, and ugly of Jackson’s life, both personal and professional, through the use primary source materials, including Jackson’s autobiographies, letters, and government reports on the Hayden Surveys.

The collection consists of photocopies of an episodic diary (July 22-October 19, 1878) kept during a trip to Montana and Wyoming.