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[Eagle Creek, Columbia River]

Creator

American Photographer · 1829–1916

AmbrotypistPublisherArtist

At twenty, Carleton Watkins headed out to California to make his fortune. After working as a daguerreotype operator in San Jose, he established his own practice and soon made his first visit to the Yosemite Valley. There he made thirty mammoth plate and one hundred stereograph views that were among the first photographs of Yosemite seen in the East. Partly on the strength of Watkins's photographs,

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

In this photograph of Eagle Creek, Carleton Watkins positioned his camera overlooking the sawmill to sympathetically record a group of trees useful only as lumberyard ornaments. His perspective also allowed him to capture the Oregon Portage Railroad, which was used to carry cut lumber from the Eagle Creek Sawmill, snaking along the banks of the river. When Watkins opened his Yosemite Art Gallery in San Francisco in 1867, he decided that he would stock only his own photographs. A four-month expedition to Oregon and the Columbia River provided hundreds of images for the gallery, including this example.

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