Thomas J. Hine: One of Yellowstone's Earliest Photographers
By James S. Brust and Lee H. Whittlesey
CURRICULUMPhotographic fame was up for grabs in the summer of 1871, as commercial photographers reached the wonders of Yellowstone for the first time. William Henry Jackson, accompanying the Hayden Survey, would gain prominence the following winter when Jackson's photographs helped convince Congress to set the area apart as the nation's first national park. Jackson's renown is undiminished, and he is usually cited as the first to photograph Yellowstone National Park.1 But William Henry Jackson was not the only cameraman in Yellowstone that summer. Three or four others were at work, yet they remain as obscure as Jackson is famous.
Joshua Crissman, a photographer from Bozeman, Montana Territory, actually worked alongside Jackson in both 1871 and 1872, but his images never enjoyed wide distribution.2 Another Bozeman photographer, Henry Bird Calfee, may have been in Yellowstone in 1871 as well, but like Crissman, Calfee is little known.3 More enigmatic yet is Augustus F. Thrasher. He photographed Yellowstone in 1871, but not one of his Yellowstone images can be located today.4
Of all the early Yellowstone photographers who had the gold ring slip from their grasp, however, the saddest experience may be that of Thomas J. Hine. A photographer with a penchant for travel, Hine was based in Chicago, headquarters of the army's Division of the Missouri, commanded by Lieutenant General Philip Sheridan. Sheridan had become interested in Yellowstone while inspecting frontier forts in 1870. In June 1871, the United States Department of the Interior was poised to send a large geological survey into the region under Dr. Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden. Sheridan's yearning to learn more about Yellowstone and to have his War Department included in its exploration spurred him to send his own, independent military reconnaissance party to accompany Hayden's group.5 General Sheridan ordered his chief engineer officer, Captain John Whitney Barlow, to lead the expedition and explore the headwaters of the Yellowstone River. Highly competent and versatile, Barlow had graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1861 and achieved a distinguished record as a Civil War artillery officer before transferring to the engineers. He was the kind of scientist-soldier to whom Sheridan would have given such an assignment.6
Barlow selected a small team of five men, including Thomas Hine.7 Expedition leaders liked to have a photographer along to provide visual documentation of the survey findings. Although photographers like Hine usually received no salary, they kept the rights to their photos and the profits from their sales. How Barlow chose Hine, and whether the two had worked together before, is not known, but when Barlow's party departed for its two-month frontier adventure, Thomas J. Hine accompanied the expedition as photographer.
Hine produced two hundred glass plates that summer, which he took back to Chicago in the fall. From these he produced a few stereographs (stereos) that were shown locally. Then disaster struck. The Chicago fire of October 8-9, 1871, destroyed all of Hine's Yellowstone negatives. Prints of only sixteen of his photographs were known to have escaped the blaze, but in a further irony, even the whereabouts of those have been heretofore unknown.8 Hine's work might have matched Jackson's in quality and importance, but with his photographs destroyed, Hine was forgotten, and park historians were left with not one of his Yellowstone images. Until now.
Over a century and a quarter after they were taken, seven of Thomas J. Hine's lost 1871 Yellowstone views (vintage stereographs) have been discovered, including the first-ever photograph of Old Faithful in eruption, an image not captured that year by Jackson or any other photographer. While researching an unrelated topic in the Print Room of the New-York Historical Society in April 1998, author James Brust reviewed its collection of Yellowstone stereographs. A group of seven stood out. They were on identical yellow mounts and were marked "Copelin & Son, Photographers, 131 Lake Street, Chicago. Views in the Yellow Stone [sic] Valley, Montana, Wyoming." Wording of the handwritten titles below each image gave the impression that these stereographs were early 1870s views. Inscribed on the reverse side of each, in the same handwriting, was "Col. Barlow."9 Here were early Yellowstone stereos, issued by a Chicago photographer, with Barlow's name written on the reverse. Could these photographs be associated with Thomas Hine's 1871 work with the Barlow expedition? Was there a link between Hine and Copelin? Indeed, Thomas Hine and Thomas Copelin were partners, and Hine made negatives for Copelin.
That a professional relationship existed between Copelin and Hine is supported by at least three important facts: In 1866-1867, Thomas Hine was listed in the Chicago city directory as a photographer at 131 Lake Street, the same address from which the recently discovered Copelin & Son Yellowstone stereos were issued; in 1870, the photo gallery of Copelin & Melander was at 131 Lake Street, and Hine was listed as "artist, [for] Copelin & Melander," making it probable that Hine took photographs that Copelin published from the same Lake Street address that appears on the Yellowstone stereos; and finally, some later Copelin & Son stereos carried the words "Negatives by T. Hine."10
Even more direct evidence of a Copelin-Hine partnership came with publication of certain stereographs in the aftermath of the 1871 Chicago fire. The mounts of three sets of these were marked "Copelin & Hine, Photographers, Chicago, Ill.,"11 showing Copelin and Hine together in autumn 1871, when the sixteen Yellowstone stereos were made.
The December 1871 issue of the Philadelphia Photographer confirms that these seven Copelin & Son Yellowstone stereos are the work of Thomas J. Hine. Discussing fire-related losses suffered by Chicago's photographic community, the article lists: "Mr. Hine, with Copelein [sic] & Son . . . Lost his series of Yellowstone negatives made last summer, after three months' labor with a government exploring party . . . Total loss about $7,000; no insurance. In business again, of the firm of Copelein [sic] & Hine. Full of Chicago vim and enterprise."12
Vim and enterprise were surely characteristics required for the rigors faced by all those who participated in early Yellowstone explorations. In what would become a summer-long odyssey, Captain Barlow's small party, including Thomas Hine, left Chicago by rail on July 2, 1871. Five days travel took them 1,200 miles west to Corinne in northern Utah Territory. From that point, the modes of transportation became progressively less comfortable and the pace slowed. Continuing first by stagecoach and then by smaller passenger wagons, Barlow's group reached Fort Ellis, Montana Territory, by way of Virginia City and Bozeman.13
Outfitted at Fort Ellis, Barlow's expedition headed south on July 16, 1871, for a six-week, loop-like tour of Yellowstone's main features. They advanced only thirty-five miles over the next three days, reaching Bottler's ranch opposite Emigrant Peak at the end of the third day. Here they had to leave the wagons behind; travel would be by horse and pack mule--or on foot--the rest of the way.14
Continuing south, they reached the site of the first of these seven surviving Thomas Hine Yellowstone photographs. Just north of Yellowstone National Park's present-day boundaries is the Devil's Slide, a gracefully curved swath of distinctively colored rock running almost the full height of Cinnabar Mountain.15 The gentleman proudly posed in front of the feature in Hine's view appears to be Captain John Barlow himself.
Moving on, the group followed the Gardner River to an area Barlow referred to as Soda Mountain--now known as Mammoth Hot Springs. Here Thomas Hine recorded two more of the newly found stereos. "Terraces & Pools. Hot Springs on Gardner's river," is a view looking northwest across Minerva Terrace. "Cap of Liberty" is a familiar landmark, named by Ferdinand Hayden in 1871. Hine's photograph title, along with Barlow's use of the same term, shows how quickly this place name gained acceptance.16
Both Barlow and his assistant, Captain David Porter Heap, mention a camp site at Meadow Brook that the group apparently used twice, both early in their trip on July 24, and on the way out of the area on August 26.17 The photo titled "Meadow Brook Camp" provides yet more proof that this group of stereos is the work of Thomas Hine with the Barlow party. The site is near the junction of present Yancey Creek and Lost Creek.18 Barlow tells us that the expedition used "two 'A' Tents and a wall tent fly," which are seen in Hine's photograph. Several people are visible. The face of the gentleman in the foreground is shaded by a tree, but his attire matches that of the man posed in front of the Devil's Slide, who may be John Barlow. It is known that Barlow's assistant, Captain Heap, wore buckskin, and he may be the man in the middle of the group of three in the background.19
The Meadow Brook campsite was opposite the mouth of the Yellowstone River's "East Fork," known today as Lamar River. It is likely that Hine recorded "View up the River--Yellowstone river near East Fork" about the same time the camp scene was taken.
Hine's photographic endeavors almost came to an abrupt end shortly after that when his mule fell over a precipice. "I came to the wreck of a pack mule," Barlow wrote, "which had made a false step in getting over a fallen tree, and had rolled, end over end, down the hill. His pack, consisting of the photographer's apparatus, escaped without serious injury."20
The group moved west toward the Firehole River and the great geyser basins. On August 3, 1871, Barlow discovered and named two-hundred-foot Fairy Falls.21 Not surprisingly, Hine photographed it, and his view, titled "Fall of the Fairies, Fire Hole Basin," is the first of that feature, and indicates all the more that this newly found group of stereographs is part of Thomas Hine's photographic record of the Barlow expedition.
Within a few days, Hine captured a far more important photo-first: Old Faithful in eruption. Barlow leaves no question that this feat had been achieved: "'Old Faithful' and the 'Giant' were both measured and photographed while in action."22 His words are directly reflected in Hine's view "Old Faithful in Action, Fire Hole Basin." Arguably the best-known scenic wonder in the nation, Old Faithful has since been recorded on film millions of times. Now, after 127 years, Thomas Hine's image of Old Faithful has emerged to claim its honors as the first such photograph.
In this era of "point and shoot" photography, when the park visitor not already armed with an automatic camera is able to buy a disposable one a few hundred feet from the geyser, the difficulties faced in photographing Old Faithful in 1871 are hard to imagine, yet impossible to exaggerate. Hine and the others were using the wet-plate collodion process, whereby negatives were made on plates of glass that had to be individually coated and sensitized immediately before use. This was difficult enough in a studio, but carrying cumbersome cameras into the field, along with large supplies of fragile glass plates and potentially dangerous chemicals, was a formidable task indeed. Once at the site of the hoped-for photo, a dark tent had to be erected so the plate could be prepared in safe light. First, an adhesive substance called collodion was poured as evenly as possible across the glass, followed by a light-sensitive chemical prepared on the spot. Only then could the plate be placed, still wet, into a lightproof holder, to be transferred to the camera and exposed.
As difficult as all this was, photographing a geyser in eruption was harder yet. First there was the issue of timing. The plate took about six minutes to prepare, then for best results had to be used and processed within another fifteen to twenty minutes. The photographer, then, could neither wait until the eruption had begun to coat the plate, nor prepare it too far in advance. Even if he could be ready at the decisive moment, the photographic properties of the wet plates created two more problems. These plates were one hundred to two hundred times less sensitive than the film we use today, leading to exposure times of a full second or more, making it hard to freeze the motion of the fast moving water and steam. In addition, the photographic emulsion on the plate reacted only to blue and ultraviolet light, so blue skies appeared very light on the photo, while other colors appeared dark. White skies without cloud detail are characteristic of photos of that era. This was not a major problem on most landscape photographs, but made it very hard to distinguish the white water and steam from blue sky when shooting an erupting geyser.23
Neither William Henry Jackson nor Joshua Crissman recorded an eruption of Old Faithful until 1872, a year after Hine's August 1871 photograph.24 Because Augustus Thrasher's summer 1871 geyser views cannot be located, we do not know if he photographed the now-famous landmark. It is clear, however, that Thrasher's group did not reach the great geyser basins until August 15--at least a week after Hine and Barlow had departed--ensuring that even if Thrasher shot an erupting Old Faithful, it was done later than Hine's.25
Hine's adventures continued. On August 10, 1871, a day that began with temperatures below freezing in Yellowstone, it was Hine himself, rather than his equipment, that narrowly avoided disaster. With a soldier named Private Lemans, Hine went back along the trail to recover a tripod, and the pair got lost. Despite Barlow's efforts to find them, Hine and Lemans wandered for two days and had to kill a deer for subsistence before they were finally located.26
Barlow's party, including Hine, continued, moving south of Yellowstone Lake to explore the upper reaches of the Yellowstone River. Heading north again, they traveled along the east side of the lake and down the Yellowstone River, eventually leaving the present park boundaries in late August along their original route. Upon reaching Fort Ellis on September 1, they took a side tour to the Crow Indian Agency, where Hine took additional photographs. These Indian portraits were lost too--a reminder that it was not just Yellowstone views that were destroyed by the fire.27
We might assume that Thomas Hine was in good spirits when the group returned to Chicago on September 15, 1871. He had captured some two hundred spectacular (and salable) images on glass. Twenty-three days later, the great fire broke out and robbed the man and his work of a place in history. Though details of his career are sparse, Hine continued in photography, even traveling to the western frontier again. In 1873, just two years after the Yellowstone mishap, Hine served as photographer for an expedition into the San Juan Mountains of Colorado, led by Lieutenant Ernest H. Ruffner. The views he captured that summer were published on stereo cards bearing the mark of Copelin & Son, but this time with credit to Hine for having produced the negatives. In the late 1870s, Hine returned to Colorado to record views of Manitou Springs, which he issued under his own name.28 Hine's "vim and enterprise" seemed to carry him through the hardship of losing his Yellowstone negatives.
The fire also destroyed John Barlow's office, which contained data and specimens from the expedition. Fortunately, Captain Heap had taken enough of the group's findings back to his St. Paul office to allow preparation of the most accurate map of the Yellowstone region of its time. Barlow, with apologies, created a remarkably descriptive report to General Sheridan using only his field notes. Barlow's account, printed in the Congressional series the following year, provides vivid images of the group's experiences and the sights of Yellowstone. More importantly perhaps, a lengthy extract of Barlow's narrative was published as a supplement to the Chicago Evening Journal on January 13, 1872. Appearing at the same time as the national debate over preserving Yellowstone, Barlow's words helped sway public sentiment in favor of creating the national park.29
The loss of Hine's images has long left a gap in the story of early Yellowstone photography. This newly surfaced work is but a tiny fraction of what Hine's contribution might have been, but the Old Faithful view alone should restore the name Thomas J. Hine to a prominent place in Yellowstone National Park history.
JAMES S. BRUST, M.D., is a psychiatrist in private practice in San Pedro, California, and previous contributor to this magazine. A longtime collector of historical prints and photographs, his interest has turned to historical research in recent years and he has written extensively on frontier photography.
LEE H. WHITTLESEY is park historian for Yellowstone National Park, a previous contributor to this magazine, and author of several books on Yellowstone, including A Yellowstone Album (1997), Death in Yellowstone (1995), Lost in Yellowstone (1995), and Yellowstone Place Names (1988).
The authors wish to acknowledge the exceptional contributions of Aubrey Haines, dean of Yellowstone historians, who provided numerous facts from his own research files and aided this project from its inception.
1. See elsewhere in this issue, Lee H. Whittlesey, "Everyone Can Understand a Picture: Photographers and the Promotion of Early Yellowstone." On William H. Jackson see Peter B. Hales, William Henry Jackson and the Transformation of the American Landscape (Philadelphia, 1988). On Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden and the geological survey of 1871 see Marlene Merrill, Yellowstone and the Great West: Journals, Letters, and Images from the 1871 Hayden Expedition (Lincoln, 1999), in press.
2. See elsewhere in this issue, Steven B. Jackson, "Joshua Crissman: Yellowstone's Forgotten Photographer."
3. See Whittlesey, "Everyone Can Understand a Picture" and William Hallam Webber, "An Amazingly Large Collection of 142 Stereographs and Cabinet-Size Photographs Taken During the 1870s and 1880s of: The Enchanted Land-or-Wonders of the Yellowstone National Park, by H. B. Calfee, Bozeman, Mont. Ter.," unpublished color copy manuscript, Photo Archives, Yellowstone Research Library, Mammoth, Wyoming (hereafter YNP Library).
4. "Diary of Cornelius Hedges," box 3, folder 2, MC 33, Montana Historical Society Archives, Helena; and Bozeman Avant Courier, November 2, 9, 23, 1871. See also Whittlesey, "Everyone Can Understand a Picture." Additional information on Augustus Thrasher provided by researcher Mary C. Horstman, Missoula, Montana, in conversation and correspondence with the authors since September 1992.
5. Paul A. Hutton, "Phil Sheridan's Crusade for Yellowstone," American History Illustrated, 19 (February 1985), 11; Paul A. Hutton to James Brust, November 4, 1998.
6. John W. Barlow, "Report of a Reconnaissance in Wyoming and Montana Territories, 1871, By Captain J. W. Barlow, Assisted by Captain D. P. Heap, Corps of Engineers, United States Army," 42d Cong., 2d sess., p. 3, Senate Exec. Doc. no. 66, 1872; Chicago Evening Journal (supplement), January 13, 1872. John Whitney Barlow was born in Wyoming County, New York, and appointed to the United States Military Academy from Wisconsin in 1856. He graduated from West Point in 1861, and was breveted three times for distinguished service as an artillery officer during the Civil War. He joined the Engineers, retiring in 1901 as Brigadier General and Chief of the Corps of Engineers. Barlow died on February 27, 1914, at age 76 while on a vacation trip to Jerusalem. On Barlow see Mary E. Sergent, They Lie Forgotten: The United States Military Academy, 1856-1861, Together with a Class Album for the Class of May, 1861 (Middletown, N.Y., 1986), 116-17; and Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1903), 1:191.
7. In addition to Barlow and Hine, the other members of the reconnaissance party were Captain D. P. Heap, engineer officer of the Department of Dakota, W. H. Wood, draughtsman, and H. G. Prout, topographer and recorder. Soldiers acting as escorts, in varying numbers, were added in Montana.
8. Barlow says Hine made and saved prints of sixteen images before the Chicago fire destroyed the negatives. Barlow, "Reconnaissance in Wyoming," 3; Barlow to Dr. F. V. Hayden, November 9, 1871, RG 57, Hayden Papers, microcopy 623, reel 2, National Archives, Washington, D.C. Hine exhibited some of his Yellowstone stereographs at the monthly meeting of the Chicago Photographic Association the week before the fire. These may have been the sixteen said to have survived. Philadelphia Photographer, 8 (November 1871), 366-67.
9. To find out if these stereographs actually belonged to John Barlow, we compared the inscriptions on the stereo cards to known examples of his handwriting, but they could not be matched conclusively. The New-York Historical Society acquisition files revealed only that these photos had been part of a large donation by a collector of historical photographs. No personal tie to Barlow could be shown.
10. Chicago Photographers 1847 through 1900, As Listed in Chicago City Directories (Chicago, 1958), Thomas Hine entry; Richard Edwards, Annual Director to the . . . City of Chicago for 1870-71 (St. Louis & New York, 1870), 185, 384; T. K. Treadwell and William C. Darrah, Stereographers of the World, Volume II-United States (n.p., 1994), Copelin & Son entry. Thomas Copelin's son and partner was Alexander J. W. Copelin. After starting at 131 Lake Street, Copelin & Son moved to 244 West Washington from 1872 to 1877, and then on to other Chicago locations.
11. Two of the Copelin & Hine series were marked with the identical wording "Stereoscopic Views of Chicago, Before and After the Fire," though in a different print style on each (examples in James Brust collection). A third set read "Views of the Great Fire in Chicago, October, 1871" (example at the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts).
12. Philadelphia Photographer, 8 (December 1871), 403. The same article lists "Copelein [sic] & Son, 131 Lake Street. Loss, $8,000."
13. Barlow, "Reconnaissance in Wyoming," 3-5.
14. Ibid., 5-7. Bottler's ranch was a favored supply stop for nearly all travelers to the area. See Aubrey L. Haines, The Yellowstone Story: A History of Our First National Park, 2 vols. (Yellowstone National Park, Wyo., 1977), 1:339 n 46, 341 n 17.
15. Barlow, "Reconnaissance in Wyoming," 8-9.
16. Ibid., 9; Chicago Evening Journal, January 13, 1872.
17. Chicago Evening Journal, January 13, 1872; Barlow, "Reconnaissance in Wyoming," 41, 43.
18. Aubrey L. Haines to James Brust, August 20, 1998.
19. Barlow, "Reconnaissance in Wyoming," 6; A. C. Peale, 1871 Diary, U.S. Geological Survey field records, USGS Library, Federal Center, Denver, Colorado, copy at YNP Library. Peale, a member of the Hayden Survey, in his journal entry for July 18, 1871, wrote "Capt. Heap . . . has a buckskin suit with fringes and has a lot of traps [things] stuck about his person."
20. Barlow, "Reconnaissance in Wyoming," 15.
21. Ibid., 22-23. Barlow stated that Fairy Falls was 250 feet high, but it is actually just under 200 feet.
22. Ibid., 31.
23. Technical details of the wet-plate collodion process provided by Mark Osterman, George Eastman House, Rochester, New York, in telephone conversations with James Brust, November 3, 9, 1998.
24. A detailed analysis of Jackson's photo inventory for both 1871 and 1872, conducted by Aubrey Haines, shows there was no view of Old Faithful until 1872. Aubrey Haines to Lee Whittlesey, May 22, Haines to Brust, August 20, Steve Jackson to James Brust, June 24, all 1998.
25. In Hedges Diary, December 11, 1871, Hedges states that "Thrasher showed his views of geysers in . . . [Helena]"; C. C. Clawson, "Notes on the Way to Wonderland; or A Ride to the Infernal Regions," Deer Lodge, Montana, New Northwest, September 23, 1871; and Barlow, "Reconnaissance in Wyoming," 30-31.
26. Barlow, "Reconnaissance in Wyoming," 33-35.
27. Ibid., 42. The Crow Indian Agency was then located at Mission Creek, five miles east of present Livingston, Montana. See Joseph Medicine Crow, From the Heart of the Crow Country (New York, 1992), 14-15.
28. Barlow, "Reconnaissance in Wyoming," 42; Treadwell, Stereographers of the World, Copelin & Son and T. Hine entries; William G. Eloe to James Brust, April 5, 1999; Alan Fraser Houston to James Brust, April 12, 1999.
29. Haines, The Yellowstone Story, 1:153; Barlow, "Reconnaissance in Wyoming," 2; Chicago Evening Journal (supplement), January 13, 1872.
TOPICS FOR DISCUSSIONNational parks- what are they, for what several reasons were they established, why are they so popular
QUESTIONS1) Why did William Henry Jackson go to photograph Yellowstone National Park, and how were his photos influential?
2) What was General Sheridan's motivation for sending U.S. Army troops on a geological survey to Yellowstone?
3) What qualifications did Captain John Whitney Barlow have that made him the right man to lead the survey expedition?
4) Why are Thomas Hine's Yellowstone photographs so hard to find now?
5) How were Hine's photos lost? How were the found?
6) What evidence is there to support the fact that Hine and Copelin enjoyed a business relationship?
7) Why did it take so long to get from Chicago to Yellowstone National Park? What modes of transportation did travelers use?
8) Why is Hine's photograph of Old Faithful so important?
9) Why was taking a photograph in 1871 such an ordeal? What process did Hine use, and what steps did he have to go through to take and develop his negative and to print his photograph?
10) What were some problems associated with the use of wet-plate negatives?
11) What important Hine photographs, other than the Yellowstone ones, were lost in the Chicago fire?
12) What effect did Barlow's words (his account of his trip) have on the national park debate?
OTHER ACTIVITIES-Create your own national park brochure. In today's world of internet sites and tourism guide books, we sometimes forget how our ancestors learned about vacation destinations. Design and create a brochure for one of America's national park sites. You will need to do some research on the park of your choice and on what makes a brochure useful and attractive to tourists. Your objective is to design and create a brochure that will make people want to visit your site.
