Visual Materials

Scene near Donner Pass, Table Peak in the distance

Description: Hart #112
Type: Visual Materials(Opens in new tab)
Production date: approximately 1860s-approximately 1880s.
Call number: photCL 74
Creator: Watkins, Carleton E (1829-1916)(Opens in new tab)
Provenance: In the personal library of Henry E. Huntington. Recorded in library card catalog, 1928. Presumed to have been the gift of Carleton E. Watkins to Collis P. Huntington. Henry E. Huntington was the executor of Collis P. Huntington's estate.
Restrictions: Open for use by qualified researchers and by appointment. Please contact Reader Services at the Huntington Library for more information. RESTRICTED: Original album (Box 10): Fragile; available with curatorial approval.

112. Scene near Donner Pass, Table Peak in the distance

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