Opening Hours
Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Visual Materials
Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
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Visual Materials
This collection contains 269 stereographs by photographer Carleton E. Watkins, dating from the 1860s to about the 1880s, that chiefly depict buildings, points of interest, and locales in Northern and Southern California. The collection includes 1 stereograph from the Central Pacific Railroad series; 5 stereographs from Watkins' Pacific Railroad Series; 110 stereographs from Watkins' Pacific Coast series; and 150 stereographs from Watkins' New Series. The Watkins' Pacific Coast Series, created between 1861 and 1874, primarily depict locales in Northern California with many images of buildings in San Francisco, views of Yosemite and Mariposa County, Missions, and some mining operations including photographs of the North Bloomfield Gravel Mining Company in Nevada County, California. The Watkins' New Series stereographs, created between 1874 and 1890, consist of images of both Southern California and Northern California, in cities including San Francisco, Pasadena, San Marino, Sierra Madre, and San Gabriel. Among the Southern California residences and properties depicted include the Sunny Slope Ranch of L.J. Rose in San Gabriel, Willow Dale owned by N.C. Carter, and Lake Vineyard owned by B.D. Wilson. Some of the stereographs in Watkins' Pacific Coast Series include titles in the margins in Watkins' own hand (see Nos. 1033, 1135, 1146, 1153, and 1721).
photST Watkins
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Visual Materials
This collection contains 372 stereographic photographs (including some variants and duplicates) by photographer A. A. Hart that document the construction of the western half of first transcontinental railroad by the Central Pacific Railroad between 1864 and 1869. The collection includes all but seven of the original series, numbered from 1 to 364 by Hart (lacking 193, 323, 333, 358, 359, 362, and 364). The images chronicle the advancement of the railroad over 742 miles in California and the Sierra Nevada Mountains, Nevada, and Utah. The majority of the photographs are views of mountains, lakes, rivers, and forested areas (some with stumps from clear-cutting in the foreground), often with railroad tracks running through the center of the images. In addition, there are also images of locomotives, Chinese and other workers, equipment, bridges, tunnels, frontier and mining towns, construction camps, as well as some images of Native Americans, including Paiute and Shoshone Indians. The stereographs primarily contain Hart's own Sacramento imprint with series titles including: "Scenes in the Sierra Nevada Mountains"; "Scenes in the Valley of the Sacramento"; "Scenes in the Washoe Range"; "Scenes on the Humboldt River"; and "Scenes near Great Salt Lake". Interspersed in the collection are stereographs published without credit to Hart by Frank Durgan and Carleton E. Watkins.
photCL 184
