Visual Materials

Original album bindings

Description: Very large leather album with brass bindings. Empty pages inside, with cut-outs where photographs were once inserted. Some handwriting in pencil on pages.
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.

[Central Pacific Railroad transfer boat "Solano" at Port Costa waiting for train.]

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.

photCL 74

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