Visual Materials
Yosemite Valley
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San Francisco and the Pacific Coast
Visual Materials
A collection of 61 mammoth plate photographs by American photographer Carleton E. Watkins (1829-1916), of various subjects in the American West, 1861-1880. The photographs include mines and mills in the Comstock district, Nevada; Yosemite Valley; Los Angeles County ranches and agriculture; San Francisco's maritime commerce and stately residences; Salt Lake City, Utah; and assorted landscape and coastal views.
Series 2
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Utah
Visual Materials
A collection of 61 mammoth plate photographs by American photographer Carleton E. Watkins (1829-1916), of various subjects in the American West, 1861-1880. The photographs include mines and mills in the Comstock district, Nevada; Yosemite Valley; Los Angeles County ranches and agriculture; San Francisco's maritime commerce and stately residences; Salt Lake City, Utah; and assorted landscape and coastal views.
Series 5
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Los Angeles County
Visual Materials
A collection of 61 mammoth plate photographs by American photographer Carleton E. Watkins (1829-1916), of various subjects in the American West, 1861-1880. The photographs include mines and mills in the Comstock district, Nevada; Yosemite Valley; Los Angeles County ranches and agriculture; San Francisco's maritime commerce and stately residences; Salt Lake City, Utah; and assorted landscape and coastal views.
Series 1
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Comstock district, Nevada – Mining views
Visual Materials
A collection of 61 mammoth plate photographs by American photographer Carleton E. Watkins (1829-1916), of various subjects in the American West, 1861-1880. The photographs include mines and mills in the Comstock district, Nevada; Yosemite Valley; Los Angeles County ranches and agriculture; San Francisco's maritime commerce and stately residences; Salt Lake City, Utah; and assorted landscape and coastal views.
Series 4
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Carleton E. Watkins mammoth plate photographs of Comstock mining, Yosemite, San Francisco, Los Angeles County, and the American West
Visual Materials
This is a collection of 61 mammoth plate photographs by Carleton Watkins made 1861-1880 in the American West, primarily California and Nevada. The subject matter is varied and includes mining views in the Comstock district, Nevada; Yosemite Valley; Los Angeles County ranches and agriculture; San Francisco's maritime commerce and stately residences; Salt Lake City, Utah; and assorted landscape and coastal views. These photographs were acquired by the Huntington Library over several decades from different sources. One of the largest series of photographs depicts mining companies and mills in the Comstock district, Nevada in 1876, when the region was in its greatest "bonanza" period. The landscape photographs depict the mine's wooden buildings and mills set in canyons and along rivers, and include piles of wood, some equipment, and occasionally employees and their families. Watkins traveled on the Virginia & Truckee Railroad to reach some sites, and railroad tracks are visible in some views. The mining sites pictured are: Mexican Mill, Merrimac Mill, Brunswick Mill, Vivian Mill, Santiago Mill, Eureka Mill, Franklin Mill, Windfield Mining Company, Land Mining Company, Empire State Mining Company, and Pacific Mining Company. A series of 20 views of Yosemite Valley, made by Watkins in 1861 and 1865-66, feature waterfalls, granite walls and cliffs, rivers and other scenery. Three views were made in the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoia trees, where naturalist Galen Clark lived in a cabin, seen in "Galen's Hospice" (item 50). Clark is also pictured in front of the "Grizzly Giant" sequoia in 1861, and on a bridge over the Merced River. Photographs in Los Angeles County depict ranches, orchards and agriculture in Pasadena and other parts of the San Gabriel Valley. Besides individual residences (see contents list for names of owners), views include: a small community of houses in Pasadena called the Indiana Colony; the "Twin Palms" in San Gabriel; Episcopal Church of Our Saviour, San Gabriel (built 1869); and the Sierra Madre Villa hotel at the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. In San Francisco, there are three city views of houses in elite neighborhoods, taken 1862-1867. Two of these photographs, the "Milton S. Latham Residence, Folsom Street" (item 97) and the "Coe-Raymond-Earle Residence, Rincon Hill" (item 98), were undiscovered at the time of publishing the catalog raisonne (see Sources). The third photograph, "Residences of Mr. Robinson and Rev. W. A. Scott, Rincon Hill" (item 96), is only known to exist in one other copy (Naef catalog: no. 340). There are also three views of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company warehouse buildings and wharf, with ships seen at dock and in the bay. The views include St. Mary's Hospital on Rincon Hill, and a distant view of the U.S. Marine Hospital. The remaining photographs in the collection are: coastal views of Mendocino County and the Farallon Islands; landscapes of the Columbia River in Oregon and Washington; a bird's-eye-view of Salt Lake City and the Mormon Tabernacle; and rock formations in "Echo City from Witch Rocks, Utah." The prints are all individually mounted and vary slightly in size, approximately 15 3/4 x 20 3/4 inches. Some are signed and numbered in ink on the mount below the photograph, and some have titles and numbers written in pencil in what appears to be Watkins' hand.
photCL Watkins 39-98
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Yosemite Valley, Yosemite Falls
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