'Everyone Can Understand a Picture': Photographers and the Promotion of Early Yellowstone
By Lee H. Whittlesey
CURRICULUMAlthough Congress established Yellowstone National Park in 1872, commercial photographers were there by summer 1871. In post-Civil War America, photography was just coming of age. Advancements in camera technology had only recently made it profitable to sell stereo views of faraway places, but the general public was hungry for news--and views--of such exotic places as "Wonderland." Stereo views (double-image photocards that could be viewed through a stereoscope to give the viewer a three-dimensional effect) had been for sale in America since at least 1854. By the 1870s, however, stereo viewing had grown into a hugely popular pastime. Millions of images, including views of Yellowstone National Park, could be found in parlors across the nation.1
Photography was and is a simple means of interpreting the landscape, simultaneously storing basic information about it and promoting it. Like the earlier fur trappers in Yellowstone, photographers were, in a sense, "horse tour guides." Traveling by horse, they produced touring images that guided travelers and became a component for interpreting early Yellowstone.2 These touring images were instantly exciting to everyone who saw them. They exemplified the sentiment expressed by the New York Times: "While only a select few can appreciate the discoveries of the geologists or the exact measurements of the topographers, everyone can understand a picture."3
The photographers who toured the Yellowstone country in the 1870s and early 1880s were doing so at a time when the American public had little access to the region. As a result, they brought images of the new place to the rest of the country. All of them promoted the new national park and stored initial information on it. Their photographs joined the sketches and chromolithographs that accompanied early accounts of the new region to develop a public image of Yellowstone as a geographic and humanistic place: a specimen of virgin land and sublime spectacle. Some of these images spread quickly across America and into Europe, influencing the way in which the public perceived and later described its experiences in the park and in the American West as a whole.4
Photography held great power in explaining and therefore transforming perceptions of the West from a mythical realm to a place that could actually be visited and settled. Early photographs also became repositories of cultural meanings that subsequent historians and interpreters could decipher.5 Before interpreting Yellowstone photographs, however, we need first to recognize that the photographers and their images existed, and as recent research shows, not everything has been discovered. Except for William Henry Jackson, other photographers who visited and photographed Yellowstone early on and were on occasion even first to do so--Thomas J. Hine and Joshua Crissman among them--have been overlooked almost completely. The majority of the photographs these men took have never received detailed examination and have been seen only by a few stereo collectors. The sheer number of their images is staggering, and the fact that they exist offers new opportunity for geographical, historical, and scientific understanding of the Yellowstone country.
W. H. Jackson, who accompanied the geological surveys of Dr. Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden in 1871 and 1872, is well known for taking some of the first photographs of the Yellowstone country. Jackson's photographs are arguably the most important interpretive aids and documents of Yellowstone's early history. Jackson has long been celebrated as photographer, artist, explorer, historian, and pioneer, and his images, along with Thomas Moran's drawings and watercolors, helped convince a skeptical Congress that the area should in some way be preserved.6 But other photographers would follow Jackson, even precede him, in recording Yellowstone in the 1870s and 1880s. These men--Hine, Crissman, Henry Bird Calfee, a man named Catlin, William I. Marshall, E. O. Beaman, John Fouch, Augustus F. Thrasher, Edgar Train, Oliver Bundy, Laton Alton Huffman, Thomas Rutter, James Nesbitt, and Charles Savage--are little known today, but their photographs had a material effect on the physical development and the perceptions of Yellowstone National Park. Together with Jackson, they were the earliest photographic interpreters of Yellowstone.
With the exception of Jackson, most of these photographers had limited contact with the era's park visitors or expeditions. To be sure, Jackson and Crissman photographed officially for Hayden's surveys in 1871 and 1872, and Thomas Hine photographed for military explorer Captain John W. Barlow in 1871, but even the impact of Crissman and Hine was limited. Yellowstone had no real roads before 1878, and tourists to the park, mostly regional inhabitants, numbered only about five hundred a year through 1877.7 Following the great Yellowstone "discovery" expeditions of 1869Ð1872, the new park remained a roadless wilderness where few people ventured until the Northern Pacific Railroad arrived in 1883. Consequently, early photographers had the place mostly to themselves.
One might think these photographers would have encountered each other routinely, but Yellowstone was and is a vast area. Contact between them and with other park tourists apparently was minimal. They took hundreds of views of Yellowstone and returned home to peddle their photographs, doing so in a scattered fashion and with limited success. Indeed, all their pictures are not yet discovered, and their complete stories are yet to be told. But James S. Brust and Steven B. Jackson tell the stories of two of them--Thomas Hine and Joshua Crissman--in greater detail than ever before, and some of their pictures appear in this issue of Montana for the first time as well.
Thomas Hine accompanied Barlow in 1871 after General William T. Sherman had assigned Barlow to make a reconnaissance of the Yellowstone country at the same time Hayden was conducting his survey. Just as Jackson was Hayden's photographer, Hine was Barlow's. Most of Hine's photographs were destroyed in the Chicago fire of October 1871, although he had made sixteen prints from his glass negatives a few days before the fire. Still, even these prints somehow disappeared until James Brust found seven of them recently at the New-York Historical Society. Details of his discovery and what is known of Hine follow in a subsequent article here.8
Bozeman photographer Joshua Crissman (1833-1922), who photographed in Yellowstone four summers, 1871 through 1874, is likewise little known. He joined the 1871 Hayden survey at Bozeman, Montana, and served with Hayden's 1872 party as well. He assisted W. H. Jackson, and we now know that at least some of Jackson's images from 1871 should be credited to Crissman, and Jackson credited a number of his 1872 images to Crissman. Original stereo cards bearing Crissman's indicia are rare, but a number of them have survived at the Montana Historical Society in Helena, the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, and in private collections. Crissman's stereograph series, called "Views in the Yellowstone National Park," apparently contained at least one hundred images taken between 1871 and 1874.9 Later, Crissman sold many of his photographic prints and even his negatives to W. I. Marshall, C. D. Kirkland, and others who reproduced and sold them prolifically under their own imprints. Thus, Crissman's Yellowstone images, although not credited to him, were seen for many years. Nonetheless, Crissman got his Yellowstone photographs printed and published before Jackson did, albeit locally in Bozeman, in 1871.
Henry Bird Calfee (1847-1912), commonly known as "Bird," and his partner Catlin are generally mentioned together among Montana photographers. Although Calfee was said to have moved to Radersburg, Montana, at one point, the two men ran a photographic business in Bozeman during the early 1870s, and the Bozeman Times mentioned them often as photo shop owners between 1875 and 1878. By his own account, Calfee came to Montana Territory in 1870 and visited Yellowstone as early as 1871. Historian Aubrey Haines cautions, however, that not all the scattered information on Calfee fits together.11 Early Montana historian M. A. Leeson, for example, says Calfee arrived in Montana in 1867 and engaged in painting for several years before turning to prospecting, and by 1872 Calfee was indeed engaged in mining near Bozeman, for his name appears in Gallatin County mining records that summer.12 Calfee may have photographed before 1875 as a hobby, but he apparently did not begin his photography business until that year because the earliest mention of his photographic activities appear in Bozeman newspapers in 1875. Said the Bozeman Avant Courier that August: "our young artist friend, H. B. Calfee, will open the photographic rooms . . . 'Bird' is an artist."13
When Calfee first photographed in Yellowstone Park is unclear. Area newspapers and numerous 1870s Yellowstone accounts noted his constant presence in the park taking pictures. Montana pioneer Wilbur E. Sanders met him in 1880 at Old Faithful, and Calfee told him that he (Calfee) had been photographing the park every summer for nine seasons. If true, Calfee began taking Yellowstone photos in 1872 (the account for the 1871 trip does not mention any photographing). Haines notes, however, that because Calfee's photo business in Bozeman is not mentioned in the newspapers until 1875, his first trip to the park may have been in 1873 rather than 1871, and his first year of photographing the park may have been 1874 rather than 1872.14
In any event, Calfee took at least 295 photos of Yellowstone every summer from at least 1874 through 1881. He figures in early park history as well. So continually was he in Yellowstone each summer during the 1870s, for example, that he was able to convey Mrs. Emma Cowan and her party to the safety of Bozeman following their ordeal with the Nez Percè Indians in 1877. In 1879, he and Catlin played a minor role in the naming of Lone Star Geyser and took photos of a "sagebrusher" party.15 In 1880, park superintendent P. W. Norris named a stream in Yellowstone Calfee Creek because Calfee was accompanying Norris's party that year.16
During 1881-1882, Calfee undertook a lecture tour with W. W. Wylie to promote Yellowstone Park, and woodcuts made from Calfee's photos graced Wylie's 1882 park guidebook, titled Yellowstone National Park or the Great American Wonderland.17 An incomplete set of Calfee's stereopticon photos survives at the Montana Historical Society. Likewise, the Yellowstone Park historic photograph collection and several known private collections all contain Calfee stereopticon views. From these we know that the series reached as high as number 275 and was called "The Enchanted Land or Wonders of the Yellowstone National Park by H. B. Calfee." Calfee's stereo views also indicate that he may have been responsible for several park place-names, among them Demon's Cave, Pulpit Basins, and Fairies' Fall, as he searched for captions for his photos.18
Calfee apparently was interested in the park's geysers more for their photographic potential than as a "geyser gazer" (someone with a passion for geysers). He even set up his traveling studio in the Upper Basin and there sold his photos directly to travelers. One of his photos shows his "store" with Calfee's signs proclaiming "Views of the Wonderland" for sale. Calfee began predicting the eruption times of some geysers, an interpretive activity in itself, probably to help sell his photos. He did this particularly at Giant Geyser, where traveler Wilbur Sanders said he ran into Calfee in 1881 and posed with his party for a Calfee photo. Said Sanders: "Calfee expected the Giant to spout today and nearly everybody in the Basin was lounging around it 'from early morn to dewy eve,' awaiting its action."19
Much less well known is Catlin, Calfee's partner. Even Catlin's first name is elusive, but ten of his stereo views are in Bob Berry's private collection in Huntsville, Texas. These were printed with the identification "Calfee and Catlin" on them and were part of the series known as "Views of the Wonderland or Yellowstone Park." Numbers in this series reach to at least 148. Whether Catlin produced views bearing his name alone is unknown, but like those of Calfee and Crissman, Catlin's stereographs are treasures of early Yellowstone days.20
Even less is known of E. O. Beaman's Yellowstone work. Beaman, photographer for John Wesley Powell's United States Geological Survey, was a New York landscape photographer who joined the USGS in 1871, was on his own by 1872, and made a number of views of the 1876 Centennial Exposition of Philadelphia. Of his Yellowstone photography, we know only that in early 1874 he exhibited in the east "by means of a powerful oxy-hydrogen stereopticon, views taken by himself . . . of the great Yellow-Stone Basin."21 Beaman probably traveled to the park in 1873, and perhaps encountered fellow photographer William Isaac Marshall there that summer. Nonetheless, the whereabouts of his Yellowstone views are unknown.22
Unlike Calfee and Beaman, William Isaac Marshall (1840-1906) was not technically a photographer, but he purchased Joshua Crissman's large Yellowstone and Montana photo collection and sold Crissman's views under his own copyright.23 Marshall must have been a fascinating character, and the photos he sold and otherwise distributed in the 1870s say much about early Yellowstone. Marshall said he arrived in Montana Territory in July 1866 as a result of the gold rush. He appears in the Virginia City census of 1870 and resided there through October 1875.24 In 1871, the Hayden survey party found him working on a Virginia City mining claim. The survey's geologist, George Allen, recalled that when they visited the gulch's placer mines, they met "a gentleman by the name of Marshall, originally from Massachusetts, [who] for awhile studied at O[berlin]." A teacher, "extensive miner, etc.," Marshall, Allen said, "took special pains to show us the entire process of gulch or placer gold mining. He is very intelligent and clearly comprehends what he attempts to explain. Several photographic views of the mine belonging to a Mr. Hart, cousin of Mr. Marshall, were taken by [our] Photo corps . . . took tea with Mr. Marshall. Mrs. Marshall was from near Worchester, Mass. They have one little girl, five years of age, Nellie, and it really does seem so good to see and hear a little child again! . . . Mr. Marshall gave us a full account of the conditions of this and other mining territories in the west."25
Marshall, who said he visited Yellowstone with his family in 1873 and 1875, claimed to be the first to take children through the park (two of his own and one of a cotraveler). The Crissman stereo views of Yellowstone that he sold, titled simply "The National Park," constituted a numbered series of 122 images. These he advertised and sold to teachers, clergymen, and others at his lectures and by mail, promoting them through articles he wrote for the National Education Association Proceedings, the New West Illustrated newspaper, L. P. Brockett's book, Our Western Empire (1882), and his three broadside sheets.26
In 1879, Marshall proposed conducting commercial tours of Yellowstone and brought at least one such group into the park. A traveler, H. B. Leckler, met them in 1881 and noted: "The other party we met at Dillon was a party of tourists, composed of one lady and six gentlemen, under the charge of Mr. William I. Marshall, of Fitchburg, Mass., a gentleman who delivers lectures upon the Park during the Winter throughout the Eastern States, and nearly always passes his Summers in the Park." It was the first season Marshall had brought a party with him, Leckler said, and, although managing it successfully, Marshall had not been compensated adequately for his expenses. "Next season, I believe he proposes to charge four hundred dollars, which will be twenty-five per cent below the cost of the journey if undertaken at regular rates," he said, adding: "We found Mr. Marshall a perfect gentleman in every way; highly educated, a fluent talker and most obliging. He gave us all the information he had about the route we propose taking, and treated us as kindly as though we were members of his [own] party. We afterwards heard that most of the tourists he conducted were pleased with the trip."27 If Marshall planned to make regular tours of Yellowstone, he seems to have made only four trips--1873, 1875, 1881, and 1882. His wife, who wrote a biography of him, says only that he took tourists to Yellowstone in 1881 and 1882.28
Marshall, who sold what were actually Crissman's stereo views for three dollars a dozen and 8" x 10" prints for seventy-five cents each, claimed they had won awards at the 1876 Centennial Exposition. By 1876, Marshall had returned to Fitchburg (his stereo views have Fitchburg stamped on them with the copyright date of 1876). He remained interested in Yellowstone, boasting in 1877 that the photos were "the only first-class views of these wonders which have ever been made."29 The claim ignored the images of Jackson, Hine, Calfee, Catlin, and Thrasher, whose Yellowstone work Marshall surely knew about.
Marshall is important here not only as part of the Crissman story but also as one of Yellowstone's earliest tour guides and promoters. In 1887 he moved to Chicago where he became principal of the Gladstone School. An educator and apparently a highly effective speaker, he gave more than two hundred lectures to various educational associations on Yellowstone, Yosemite, and mining. Often referred to as "Professor," he published several books on educational topics and Oregon history, including one on Oregon's Whitman massacre that he sent in manuscript to Yellowstone superintendent John Pitcher for comment in 1904.30 In 1879, he published a "broadside," perhaps only a single sheet, titled The Yellowstone National Park, and as late as 1902 he visited the park and was given a permit to collect geological specimens.31
John H. Fouch, another 1870s Yellowstone photographer, shares similar undeserved obscurity. Fouch, whom Yellowstone superintendent Philetus Norris mentioned as having visited the park in 1878, traveled with Norris to the Custer battlefield in 1877, where he took the earliest views of that place. Some of Fouch's photos of Montana Territory are known, but few of his Yellowstone images seem to have survived.32
Fouch is said to have made only sixteen Yellowstone images, of which three are extant. Those three are part of a set of sixty-three photos he issued, titled "Stereoscopic Views of the Yellowstone Country," that he apparently took between 1876 and 1878. Fouch evidently reissued these photographs from Minnesota in 1879 under the title, "Artistic Views of the Yellowstone Country and Yellowstone National Park, Series of 1876, 1877, and 1878." Most of these were of Montana Territory, and it is not known how many of them still exist. Fouch's catalog shows that his photos numbered 48 to 63 were of Yellowstone Park. One of his extant stereo views is identified "Series of 1879, 1880, 1881, and 1882," indicating he may have visited the park in other years and taken additional photos, although these images could have been earlier photographs reissued. Thus, at least some if not all of his park photos date from summer 1878.33
Still another 1870s Yellowstone photographer is A. F. Thrasher, about whom we know very little. Some of Thrasher's writings on the park survive but none of his Yellowstone photos are known to exist. Thrasher is known to have been in Deer Lodge, Montana, between 1867 and 1869, and by 1870 he was located at Bannack as a "daguerrian artist." Sometime between 1870 and 1872, he relocated to Lewiston, Idaho, where he issued stereo views of Idaho. He is known to have been in partnership with William Hyde in 1871, the year Thrasher went to Yellowstone.34
Thrasher accompanied the Raymond-Clawson party into Yellowstone in 1871, and, according to R. W. Raymond, brought a sizable load of photographic supplies into what would become the park. C. C. Clawson called him "A. F. Thrasher, photographer, and Prof. of the Fine Arts generally." Thrasher would go anywhere to secure a photo, Raymond said in a long description of him, adding: "he invests the profession of photography with all the romance of adventure." At one point, Raymond claimed, Thrasher became so caught up in the beauties of Yellowstone that the party was forced to abandon him: "I may mention here, that, after we had been several weeks in the mountains, Mr. Thrasher became entirely unmanageable. He had so many views to take that there was no hope of getting him back to civilization until his chemicals were used up--and he had provided a desperately large stock. So on the ca–on of the Yellowstone we left him."35
Thrasher left Deer Lodge in 1872, was active in eastern states after that, and reportedly died in the mid-1870s. Like Hine, Crissman, Calfee, and Catlin, he was as early (or nearly so) as William Henry Jackson to photograph Yellowstone.36
Two other obscure photographers of Yellowstone in the 1870s who deserve mention are Edgar H. Train (1831-1899) and Oliver C. Bundy (1827-1891) of Helena, Montana. The Yellowstone Park photo collection contains at least seventy-four of their stereo-view cards. How many they actually produced is unknown, as is the nature of their association with Yellowstone. Originally from California, Train arrived in Idaho in 1864 and moved to Helena in 1866, where he bought out the photo shop of a man named Douglass. Bundy (Train's brother-in-law) moved to Montana Territory in 1866 and in 1872 opened a photo gallery in Virginia City. He went into partnership with Train in Helena in 1876, and bought Train completely out that same year. Some of their photo cards carry the logo "Bundy and Train."37
Still another Yellowstone photographer was Charles Roscoe Savage (1832-1909). At least two-dozen of his Yellowstone images are known. Savage, an Englishman who became a Mormon and practiced photography in Salt Lake City, visited Yellowstone in 1875 and 1884. His photographs from those years are in the Mormon Church collections and at Utah State Historical Society, both in Salt Lake City. Savage was reputable in Utah in his day, but his Yellowstone views are little known. Furthermore, except for an article he wrote about his 1884 trip that appeared in the Deseret Evening News, little is known of Savage's Yellowstone trips.38
Better known is photographer L. A. Huffman (1854-1931), who worked in the park somewhat later. Huffman apprenticed with F. Jay Haynes at Moorhead, Minnesota, and then went to Fort Keogh, Montana, in 1879. After setting up a studio in nearby Miles City, he traveled to Yellowstone but seems to have made photographs of the park only in 1882. Few of these Huffman photographs apparently survived, although Huffman seems to have produced a fair number. A page from his 1883 catalog lists 58 captioned images taken in the park. Some of these are now held by the Montana Historical Society, but many may no longer exist, which is unfortunate, for among them are some unusual shots, including one of the rare Excelsior Geyser in eruption.39 Still, Huffman may have reproduced his images in prolific numbers. An 1883 newspaper article noted: "L. A. Huffman, the photographer, will have ready for the spring trade fifty thousand views of the Yellowstone National Park and Indian camps. As an artist Mr. Huffman is chief in the business." If Huffman produced fifty thousand images, doing so represents an impressive "reach." How many images any of Yellowstone's early photographers actually reproduced, however, is unknown.40
Thomas H. Rutter and his partner for a time, James Nesbitt, are better known as photographers at Butte, Glendale, and Deer Lodge, Montana, but they also produced Yellowstone views. Rutter stated on his outsized stereo views that he was "established 1870," but he neglected to say where. Located in Deer Lodge in 1879, he visited Yellowstone that year and some if not all of his Yellowstone photos may date from then. The Montana Historical Society possesses ten of his stereo cards, ten more are in the private collection of Ed Knight of Jackson, Wyoming, and about ten others are in the University of Washington special collections. The numbering on his stereo cards indicates that he marketed at least 113 views.41
Numerous other companies and photographers sold commercial views of Yellowstone after 1883, among them Webster and Albee, Underwood and Underwood, C. Bierstadt, Lovejoy and Foster (who reissued Joshua Crissman's images), W. E. Hook, Griffith and Griffith, the Canvassers, B. W. Kilburn, B. F. Hoyt, C. D. Kirkland, O. S. Compton, Gamble and Stafford, and the most famous and prolific, F. Jay Haynes, whose earliest views of Yellowstone date from 1881. In addition, hundreds of amateur photographers "shot" Yellowstone after the 1870s. One of these, Joseph Paxton Iddings, a geologist with the United States Geological Survey, pasted many of his Yellowstone photos into his handwritten notebooks, which now reside in the National Archives in Washington, D.C.
All of these early image-makers promoted Yellowstone Park just as it was becoming known to the larger world. They stimulated interest in it, froze it historically, helped initiate its interpretation, and influenced the way Americans, Europeans, and others viewed and perceived the region as a geographic entity. Because they sold their pictures commercially (often in stereoscopic form), their influence on early Yellowstone interpretation was arguably greater than that of noncommercial photographers. Moreover, their images assumed cultural significance because their Yellowstone views supported the public's romantic visual expectations. In the towns where they operated their photo shops, they spread the word about Yellowstone and shaped the public's sense of it. However quickly these photographers were forgotten, it is important to know that their photographs exist and to enjoy their images as a means of time travel. For everyone can understand a picture.42
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). He holds a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Oklahoma.
Curriculum
TOPICS FOR DISCUSSIONDevelopment of photographic technology and its impact on society
The power of a photographic image
QUESTIONS1) What was a stereoscope? Why was it popular in the 19th century? How did the development of camera technology affect the stereoscope industry?
2) What purposes do photographs serve?
3) What does the statement "everyone can understand a picture" mean?
4) Why was the access to Yellowstone Park so limited during the 1870s and early 1880s?
5) What effect did the early Yellowstone photos have on people's perceptions of the West?
6) Why were some of the Park's early photographers overlooked by history?
7) What event changed people's ability to access the Park? What year did it occur?
8) Who was William Marshall, and how important was he to the photographic history of the Park?
9) What did the early photographs mean to the development of the Park, then and now?
OTHER ACTIVITIES- Using the visual analysis form in the appendix, select any photo (of anything at all) and as a class, perform a visual analysis on it. This will acquaint students with the visual analysis process. Then have the students select their own photos and perform visual analysis on them. Have the students present them to the class.
- Have students bring in a series of photos from a family trip, friends (whatever). There are two different projects to do. 1) Students make an album, complete with photos, illustrations, and captions. 2) Students get the pictures color-photocopied and make stereoscope cards. You may be able to find an antique or reproduction/facsimile stereoscope, or you can make one yourself.
- Purchase disposable cameras, or borrow cameras from your school's photography department, and have students photograph natural and geological features in your area or people doing everyday things. Caption the photos and assemble them. Make a slide show, album, or poster board to share with the school or local interest groups.
