Yellowstone: Our First National Park
William Henry Jackson’s iconic 19th-century photographs of boiling mud pots, towering falls, and exploding geysers first proved the Yellowstone wonderland was not the stuff of fairy tales.
IN HIS DECADES OF ADVENTURING ACROSS THE FRONTIER IN THE LATE 1800S, William Henry Jackson, known as “the pioneer photographer,” carried a small daguerreotype photograph he’d made in Vermont of his fiancée Caddie Eastman. In 1866, the couple had a lover’s spat that appeared irreparable. “She had spirit, I was bull-headed, and the quarrel grew. If I had possessed the wit of a squirrel, I would have acknowledged my fault—whatever it was—and been forgiven,” Jackson wrote in his 1940 autobiography, “Time Exposure.”
The falling-out was a turning point in Jackson’s life, setting him on a path westward. He quit his job at a Burlington studio and caught the next train to New York. A week later, he was on his way to Montana, where he became a bullwhacker, driving oxen teams on the Oregon Trail.
One of the most significant landscape photographers of the 19th century, Jackson took the first photographs of places like the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings, Colorado’s Mount of the Holy Cross, and the mythical “wonder land” of Yellowstone. His images played a role in Congress establishing Yellowstone as a national park, with President Ulysses S. Grant signing the Yellowstone National Park Act into law on March 1, 1872.
CAMERA GEAR
IN THE LATE 19TH CENTURY, getting the shot was no small feat. Back then, there was no such thing as enlargements. To get a bigger photo, you needed a bigger camera. On the surveys, Jackson carried stereoscopic, 5x8 inch, 6½x8½ inch, 8x10 inch, and 11x14 inch cameras. He even experimented with a 20x24 camera, which a 1936 Denver Post article described as “half as big as a modern office desk.” To employ the wet-plate photographic process in the field, Jackson devised a darkroom canvas tent lined with orange calico. For each exposure, he would crawl into the tent to sensitize the glass plates, coating them with collodion. Next, he’d place the plate in the camera and expose it to light, capturing a photo. Then it was back to the tent to process, or “fix,” the negative. If the plate dried before developing, the image would be ruined.
This painstaking process required Jackson to be both artist and chemist. It took him roughly half an hour to make a single photograph. And it was sometimes dangerous work. His portable darkroom was often pitched precariously on cliff edges. The survey had to contend with grizzly bears, thin air, and the challenges of transporting delicate gear over rugged terrain. “The glass alone—some 400 pieces—made up in bulk what they lacked in weight,” Jackson wrote in “The Pioneer Photographer.”
In his second autobiography “Time Exposure" (1940), Jackson describes the enormous load of gear carried by wagon and mule into Yellowstone, including dark box, tripod, chemicals, water keg, cameras, and enough glass for 400 plates. “The whole must have weighed not less than 300 pounds,” Jackson wrote. He packed gear into rawhide containers called parfleches and loaded them onto a “fat little mule with cropped ears” called Hypo.
AN ARTIST FROM THE START
WILLIAM HENRY JACKSON WAS BORN IN 1843 in Keeseville, New York. His first job was as a colorist and photo retoucher in 1858 in C.C. Schoonmaker’s photo studio in Troy, New York. During his year-long enlistment with the Union Army during the Civil War, the self-taught artist was tasked with sketching and drawing. After his time as a bullwhacker, Jackson opened the Jackson Brothers’ Studio in Omaha, Nebraska, photographing the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad and taking portraits of Native Americans.
In 1869, Jackson met Dr. Ferdinand VanDeveer Hayden, director of the U.S. Geological Survey of the Territories, who the Sioux called “man-who-picks-up-stones-running.” The two met at Madame Cleveland’s, a brothel in Cheyenne that Jackson described as “positively screaming with elegance and refinement” and the ladies as “pretty solvent.” It was business not pleasure for the photographer—he had convinced the ladies to sit for portraits. The next day, when Jackson was delivering the photos to the brothel, in walked Hayden with some military friends. “He acted like a cat in a strange garret,” Jackson recalled in his 1929 autobiography, “The Pioneer Photographer.” The dated cat idiom meant that Hayden was feeling, perhaps, out of his element in the brothel.
A year later, Hayden visited the photographer in Omaha and, after seeing his photos of the railroads, offered him an unpaid position on his upcoming survey.
KEY DATES
1843: William Henry Jackson is born in Keeseville, New York, on April 4.
1858: Jackson works as a photo retoucher in Troy, New York, sharpening details with India ink and warming up stiff portraits with watercolor paints.
1862–63: Jackson enlists with the Union Army during the Civil War.
1866: Jackson leaves for the West, picking up work as a bullwhacker on the Oregon Trail.
1867: Settles in Omaha, Nebraska where Jackson founds Jackson Brothers’ Studio, and begins photographing the Union Pacific Railroad and portraits of Native Americans.
JACKSON AS MOUNTAINEER
JACKSON WAS A RUGGED EXPLORER WHO BUSHWHACKED for miles in dense woods and scaled rocky summits to find the perfect viewpoint. To photograph Yellowstone’s Tower Falls, he had to descend 200 feet into the ravine, “through steep sides covered with thick growth of small timber and brush.” After capturing the image, he carried the wet plate, wrapped in a wet towel, back to the top. “I had a slow, laborious climb back up again, and reached the top out of breath in a wringing perspiration,” wrote Jackson, who repeated the process three more times that day. “A stiff price in labor for the one subject.”
To lug all that gear into “I reached the top out of breath in a wringing perspiration.” W.H. Jackson the wilderness and ascend steep trails with the clock ticking on the glass plates, Jackson must have had an extraordinary amount of vim and vigor. “These guys were carrying this gear to the top of 14,000-foot peaks, which is truly amazing to me,” says Bob Blair who compiled, edited, and annotated Jackson’s autobiography, “The Pioneer Photographer” (2005).
W.H. Jackson's Tower Falls photo in 1871
PRESENT DAY TOWER FALLS
HAYDEN SURVEY
IN THE SPRING PRIOR TO THE 1871 HAYDEN SURVEY, two articles in Scribner’s Monthly described Yellowstone’s wonders, igniting public interest in the region and priming the pump for the Yellowstone legislation. N. P. Langford, who co-led the first organized Yellowstone expedition with Henry D. Washburn in 1870, penned the article “The Wonders of Yellowstone.” (Langford went on to become the first superintendent of Yellowstone National Park.) A second Scribner’s article titled “Thirty-seven Days of Peril” told the story of Truman C. Evert's terrifying ordeal of being left behind on the 1870 expedition. The articles sparked Hayden’s curiosity and captivated the public, though back east a general skepticism lingered about the Yellowstone tales.
A New York Times article on October 23, 1871, titled “The New Wonder Land,” publicly challenged the Hayden survey. Prove it, the article seemed to say. “The accounts of the Yellowstone country hitherto received … have been so extraordinary that confirmatory testimony has been anxiously looked for. The official narrative of the Hayden Expedition must be deemed needful before we can altogether accept stories of wonder hardly short of fairy tales in the astounding phenomena they describe.”
“People questioned the veracity of the stories from mountain men drinking too much around the campfire,” says Tim McNeese, Ph.D., author of “William Henry Jackson's Lens: How Yellowstone's Famous Photographer Captured the American West” (2023). “Once these more science-based expeditions got out there, people started to sit up on their hind legs and pay attention.”
The Hayden survey, which included geologists, topographers, botanists, and entomologists, returned with proof, in the form of minerals, artifacts, paintings, and—what some consider the linchpin—photographs by Jackson that did not lie. “Description might exaggerate, but the camera told the truth; and in this case the truth was more remarkable than exaggeration,” H. M. Chittenden wrote in his “Guide to the Yellowstone: Historical and Descriptive” (1895). Hayden’s survey ended in October 1871, and within weeks of his return to Washington, he began campaigning for the area’s protection. Jackson followed Hayden to Washington to make prints for Congress members. By December, the Yellowstone Park Act became a bill and by March 1872, it was signed into law. By legislative standards, the bill’s swift passing in a span of only 10 weeks was remarkable. “The Hayden Survey was the real catalyst,” McNeese says.
KEY DATES
1870: In July, Ferdinand V. Hayden visits Jackson in Omaha, offering him an unpaid position as a photographer on his geological survey of the West. Jackson accompanies the survey to the Wyoming Territories and Southwest.
1870: Henry D. Washburn and N. P. Langford undertake the first organized expedition to the Yellowstone region.
1871: Scribner’s Monthly publishes Langford’s “The Wonders of Yellowstone” article.
1871: Jackson becomes a paid member of the U.S. Geological Survey of the Territories, exploring the Yellowstone region; artist Thomas Moran joins the survey. Mammoth Hot Springs is the first stop.
AN EVOLVING ART
LANDSCAPE PAINTER THOMAS MORAN joined the Hayden survey in 1871, adding another means of documenting the survey. He and Jackson quickly became friends and collaborators, with Moran suggesting compositions and sometimes serving as a figure within the landscape. Moran’s eye as a painter influenced the aesthetic of Jackson’s photography. “Hayden and Jackson played key roles, but to me, the third leg of the stool here is Thomas Moran,” McNeese says. While Jackson’s photos were all black and white—color photography wouldn’t become popular until the mid- 20th century—Moran brought realism to the scene with rich watercolors and paintings of Yellowstone’s dazzling pools and dramatic waterfalls.
W.H. Jackson's Mammoth Hot Springs photo in 1874
Present Day Mammoth Hot Springs
Thomas Moran's Paintings completed during the Hayden Survey
DEBATE ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF PHOTOS
IN HIS BOOK “PICTURE MAKER OF THE OLD WEST” (1947), Jackson’s son Clarence described the scene in Washington as Congress debated the Yellowstone Park Act legislation. “At just the right moment, prints of the Jackson photographs were placed on the desks of all Senators and members of the House. Handsomely bound folio volumes of the photographs, neatly captioned and bearing the name of the recipient in gold, were distributed,” he wrote. “It was these actual pictures of the wonders of the upper Yellowstone that clinched the vote in favor of the first National Park.”
While many historians credit the photos as the clincher in persuading Congress to pass the bill, not everyone agrees. “Clarence's writings tend to glorify his father's achievements, often to a place of inaccuracy,” says Blair. Hales also suggests the photos’ impact has been overstated. “[It was] common legend that Jackson's photographs, presented in bound portfolios to a number of influential senators and congressmen, single-handedly turned the tide for passage of the bill,” Hales wrote. But official records, including transcripts of the debates in the House and Senate, suggest otherwise.
Hales scrutinized history book footnotes and uncovered an academic article by Michigan State University journalism professor Howard Bossen, titled “A Tall Tale Retold” (1981). Bossen did a deep dive into original historical reports and congressional accounts. Congress members did indeed view the photos, but there’s little evidence, Bossen says, that they were the primary driver. “Jackson himself viewed his role as supportive rather than primary,” wrote Bossen, citing Jackson’s words in “Time Exposure.” “Pictures were essential to the fulfillment of the doctor's plan for publicizing this survey, but the basic purpose was always exploration. I cannot be too careful in emphasizing the fact that in [the 1871 expedition] … I was seldom more than a sideshow in a great circus."
Jackson’s photos, more realistically, were one in a confluence of influences that persuaded Congress. Banking and railroad corporations saw the park as a way to generate tourism in the region, and influential government representatives who’d explored the area recognized the importance of preserving it. Hayden’s findings and his own articles in Scribner’s Monthly also made the case for the legislation.
KEY DATES
1872: Hayden lobbies for protection of Yellowstone; Jackson’s photographs are delivered to congress members as proof of the region’s wonders. President Ulysses S. Grant signs The Yellowstone National Park Act, making Yellowstone the world’s first national park.
1872: Congress makes a $75,000 appropriation allowing the survey to return to Yellowstone.
1873: On Oct. 8, Jackson marries Emilie Porter with “utmost simplicity” in Cincinnati.
1874: Jackson makes the first photographs of the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings.
1878: After nine years of surveys, the team returns to the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone, marking the final year of the surveys; Jackson is 35 years old.
1879: Jackson settles in Denver, opening the W.H. Jackson Photograph and Publishing Company.
1894–96: Jackson travels the globe taking photos for the World’s Transportation Commission.
1924: Jackson moves to Washington D.C. where he paints and works on his memoirs.
1929: Jackson’s first autobiography, The Pioneer Photographer: Rocky Mountain Adventures with a Camera, is published in collaboration with Howard R. Driggs.
1936: Jackson is commissioned by the Department of the Interior to paint a series of murals depicting four great surveys of the American West.
1940: Time Exposure, Jackson’s second autobiography is released.
1942: Jackson dies at 99 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
LEGACY: PIONEERING PHOTOGRAPHY PUBLIC IMPACT
REGARDLESS OF THE DEGREE TO WHICH THE PHOTOGRAPHS INFLUENCED CONGRESS, Jackson’s pioneering work left an enduring mark on history and public perception. Early prints and stereographs (two side- by-side photographs of the same subject that were viewed through a stereoscope to create image depth) of his Western landscape photos were a mainstay in the Victorian parlor. “The stereoscope was hugely popular, and Jackson was selling thousands of stereographs,” McNeese says. “His photos were a selling point for the public.” The stereoscope’s double image created a 3D experience that virtually transported the viewer to places like Mammoth Hot Springs or Old Faithful, inspiring them to visit Yellowstone in real life. This early engagement with wild places helped foster a generation dedicated to conservation of the land.
The images that Jackson worked so indefatigably to secure—photos that captured the sublime beauty of the Western wilderness and our relationship to it—still resonate today. Just as Ansel Adams’s photos raised public awareness and support for protecting Yosemite and, in more recent memory, James Balog’s photos of shrinking glaciers have helped shine a spotlight on the effects of climate change, Jackson’s photos left an impact. Photos have power. And no matter the subject, from war to conservation, they can sway public opinion.
When Hayden’s group arrived in Yellowstone, they found people bathing in the mineral springs. “People were talking about building a wooden fence around a geyser, and you'd have to buy a ticket to get in,” McNeese says. “It’s just unfathomable to imagine what Yellowstone could have become. ‘You want to see the mud pot? That'll be a quarter.’ Hayden foresaw that this place needed to be protected by the government, so it would be a consistent experience for people in the future.” Blair agrees that Jackson’s photographs did motivate people to protect the land. “And if we look at an even bigger picture, it also opened up avenues for more of the American landscape to be protected with more national parks and monuments,” Blair says.
The establishment of Yellowstone as the world’s first national park sparked a movement. By 1916, the U.S. had 35 national parks and Woodrow Wilson signed the Organic Act into law, creating the National Park Service to manage them. Today, the U.S. boasts 63 national parks and more than 400 national park sites, including monuments, recreation areas, seashores, and battlefields. Since the NPS started counting in 1904, more than 16 billion people have visited those sites. Yellowstone remains in the top ten most popular national parks, with 4.5 million people visiting in 2023. The number of photos snapped on smartphones carried in back pockets is uncountable.
“Even long after [Jackson’s] death, he continues through his pictures as a powerful spokesman for the importance of landscape to American culture,” wrote Lee H. Whittlesey, a National Park Service historian, in his foreword to Blair’s “The Pioneer Photographer” (2005). In his later years, Jackson returned to painting and, at 92, was commissioned by the Department of the Interior to create murals depicting four major government surveys of the West. Still, Jackson viewed his years on the Hayden surveys as the pinnacle of his career. “If any work that I have done should have value beyond my own lifetime, I believe it will be the happy labors of the decade 1869–1878,” Jackson wrote in “Time Exposure.”
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