Visual Materials
Colorado River Steamer "Gila" Arizona
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Colorado River Steamer "Gila" Arizona
Visual Materials
Watkins New Series #4870
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[Colorado River at Yuma, Arizona, from the bridge.]
Visual Materials
This collection contains 430 albumen photographs by photographer Carleton E. Watkins that chiefly depict buildings, points of interest, and locales in Northern and Southern California in the 1870s and 1880s, as well as 223 card photographs by photographer Alfred A. Hart documenting the construction of the western half of the transcontinental railroad by the Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR) in the 1860s, which were later published by Watkins under his own imprint. Images by Watkins depict locations in Arizona and California including: Lake Tahoe, Los Angeles, the Mammoth Tree Grove, Paso Robles, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Gabriel, San Luis Obispo, San Pedro, Santa Monica, Soda Springs, Wilmington, and Yosemite, as well as views related to the Southern Pacific Railroad and of the Colorado River. There are a few images of Native Americans in Arizona and California, and several images related to trains and railroads. The photographs have been removed from the original album, which is a large leather album with brass bindings (Box 10). There are some handwritten identifications in the album pages, most likely written after if was received by the Library.
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The Desert of the Gila River, Southern Arizona
Visual Materials
This set of photographs by Frederick Monsen focuses on Native Americans of the Southwest in mostly candid views taken in Pueblo communities, approx. 1886-1911. Photographs include portraits, ceremonies, dances, pueblos, livestock and scenes of daily activities. A smaller portion of the collection consists of landscapes, cliff-dwellings, ruins, gold miners, wagons and scenes of pioneer life in the West. Some photographs were made by Monsen while he was with U.S. Geological Surveys (including the Brown-Stanton survey of 1889), and others during his own photography trips. The majority of Native Americans pictured are Hopi and Navajo, but there are also Paiute, Apache, and Pueblo Indians. There are a few views of Mojave Indians of Southern California, and natives of Baja, Mexico. There are several views of Indian children, shown with and without clothes, in their daily activities. Scenes of non-Indian Western life include men in covered wagons on trails, gold prospectors and stagecoaches. There are many artistic landscape views of canyons, buttes and mesas; Death Valley; salt beds; ancient ruins; cactus and other desert plants. Unusual subjects of note are three photographs of skeletons in the deserts of Arizona and one view of the covered bodies of prospectors being carried on burros. The prints are all signed by Monsen and have typed or handwritten captions on the back, written by Monsen.
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