[Leavenworth, Lawrence, and Galveston Railroad Bridge across the Kaw River at Lawrence, Kansas]

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[Leavenworth, Lawrence, and Galveston Railroad Bridge across the Kaw River at Lawrence, Kansas]

Creator

Alexander Gardner

American Photographer · 1821–1882

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As an idealistic young reporter and newspaper editor in Glasgow, Scotland, Alexander Gardner dreamed of forming a semi-socialistic colony somewhere in what he thought of as the unspoiled wilderness of America. He selected a place in Iowa, but even though he sent family and friends to live there, Gardner never joined them. Instead, when he disembarked in New York he remained. The celebrated America

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Date
1867
Medium
Albumen silver print
Culture
American
Department
Photographs
Institution
Getty Museum

In 1867 the Kansas Pacific and Union Pacific railroads hired Alexander Gardner to document the building of a rail route to Calfornia. While in Kansas, Gardner photographed the local line, the Leavenworth, Lawrence, and Galveston Railroad. Here a large group of men gathers upon and around a steam engine that has just traversed a bridge across the Kaw River. Gardner included a large aqueduct on the right, which cast a dark, pierced shadow over the river's barren near shore. A picturesque row of buildings and largely leafless trees lines the riverbank in the distance. Unlike most phototgraphs documenting railroads and railroad construction in the 1800s, this image was made in an area already inhabited by settlers.

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