948
In a letter to the editor of the Photographic and Fine-
Art Journal (v. 8, 1855, 124), Carvalho provided some
details of his experiences:
I succeeded beyond my utmost expectation in producing
good results and effects by the Daguerreotype process, on
the summits of the highest peaks of the Rocky Mountains
with the thermometer at times from 20 degrees to 30
degrees below zero, often standing to my waist in snow,
buffi ng, coating, and mercurializing plates in the open
air. In nearly every instance Barometrical, and Thermo-
metrical observations were obtained at the same moment,
with the picture. ... I had considerable trouble with iodine,
which under ordinary circumstances requires 80 degrees
Fht. before it will part with its fumes. I had to use artifi cial
heat in every instance; I found it necessary to make up in
quantity for the loss of temperature. I generally employed
Anthony’s anhydrous sensitive [iodine], and my boxes
during a continuous use of fi ve months only required re-
plenishing four times, notwithstanding they were opened
every time I made a picture, to arrange it smoothly at the
bottom. The coating boxes were made expressly for my
use on the Expedition by E. Anthony, Esq., and I cheer-
fully recommend the use of similar ones for like purposes.
(Quoted from Taft, 1964, 264–65)
Carvalho‘s autobiography also summarized the dif-
fi culties he faced in the Rocky Mountains. At one point
Frémont himself accompanied Carvalho on a three-hour
climb to a mountain peak and took meteorological ob-
servations while Carvalho produced a panorama of the
landscape below (Carvalho 1859, 82). Other primary
problems facing mountain photographers of any era
were atmospheric haze or hazardous weather conditions.
During the dry season forest fi res caused by lightning
strikes also reduced or destroyed visibility. Although
some of Carvalho’s daguerreotypes were sent back East
and copied by Matthew B. Brady’s studio and Carvalho
himself ended up an invalid for a while in Salt Lake
City, the original daguerreotype plates and apparently
Brady’s copy prints and negatives were lost.
A similar fate to Carvalho’s work also befell that of
John Mix Stanley (1814–1872), a well known painter
of Indian portraits, an artist on a U.S. Army exploring
expedition, and a commercial daguerreotypist. He ac-
companied a railroad survey led by Isaac I. Stevens
through the northern Rocky Mountains to Olympia,
Washington, from the spring to the fall of 1853. He
appears to have concentrated, given his past interest in
documenting the Native American population, in tak-
ing portraits rather than attempting landscape views.
Stanley’s daguerreotypes from this trip are believed
to have been destroyed, along with his more valuable
Indian Gallery collection of his art, in a 1865 fi re at the
Smithsonian Institution.
The fi rst large-scale private attempt to commercially
photograph an overland route from the East to Califor-
nia in order to lure settlers west was undertaken by the
California daguerreotypist John W. Jones in 1851. He
travelled from California to Independence, Missouri.
Jones also solicited daguerreotypes from other photog-
raphers in the surrounding territories. He is reported to
have produced 1,500 daguerreotypes on his journey,
but no trace of these photographs is known to exist
(Palmquist and Kailbourn 2000, 333). Some of these
photographs are supposed to have depicted the Sierra
Nevada Mountains. A painted panorama based on these
daguerreotypes, Great Pantoscope of California, the
Rocky Mountains, Salt Lake City, Nebraska & Kansas,
was opened in 1852 in Boston and circulated for two
years in the eastern United States.
Beginning in the early 1850s, wet-collodion negative
photographers produced much more dramatic results
of mountain scenes than could be achieved with the
daguerreotype process. In the western United States,
numerous exploring expeditions and adventurous pho-
tographers acting alone in the 1860s and 1870s gener-
ated substantial numbers of Rocky Mountain views.
The California side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in
which Yosemite National Park is situated also saw sig-
nifi cant photographic activity, including mammoth-plate
views. The most prominent mountain photographers in
the United States of this period were Carleton E. Wat-
kins, Timothy H. O’Sullivan, Eadweard J. Muybridge,
Andrew J. Russell, and William H. Jackson. Jackson’s
photograph “Mountain of the Holy Cross” taken in Au-
gust 1873 while a member of F.V. Hayden’s geological
survey party, is considered the most important mountain
photograph in 19th century America. The construction
and completion of the transcontinental railroad in the
United States offered some photographers such as Frank
J. Haynes unprecedented opportunities for national ex-
posure, not only for his railroad photography, but also
as the offi cial photographer of Yellowstone National
Park in Wyoming.
Lesser known photographs of the Canadian Rocky
Mountains were taken by anonymous Royal Engineers
photographers accompanying the North American
Boundary Commission surveys of 1858–1862 and
1872–1875. As happened in the United States dur-
ing route planning for the transcontinental railroads,
survey parties looking for suitable routes through the
Rocky Mountains and other mountain ranges of Brit-
ish Columbia included photographers. The two most
notable photographers who accompanied these geologi-
cal and geographical surveys were Benjamin Baltzly
(1871), an employee of the William Notman & Sons
fi rm of Montreal, Quebec, and Charles G. Horetzky
(1871–1879). The construction of the Canadian Pacifi c
Railway through the Rocky Mountains was documented
by several photographers, including Richard Maynard
and William McFarlane Notman and land surveyors
employed by the Canadian government. The Surveyor