WILLIAM HENRY JACKSON Dale Creek Bridge, Main Line, Union Pacific Railway, 1885, Albumen print 17x21.4" ASG# WHJ/3614. Mounted on decorative UPRR heavy mount 25x50" label below print has title and Union Pacific Overland the Route logo.

The Union Pacific Rail Road was completed in 1869 in Promontory Point Utah. An iconic dramatic view. Jackson made smaller views later that year and went back later with the mammoth plate view camera. In this dramatic decorative view Jackson has the train stretching over the length of the bridge joining Americas destiny.

William Henry Jackson (1843-1942) trained as an illustrator and painter before picking up the camera shortly after the Civil War. He worked as a bullwhacker before setting up his first photography studio in Omaha. By 1867 he was taking pictures of the local Pawnee Indians. In 1869 he was taking landscape views along the route of the Union Pacific Railroad. The scientist and Geologic Survey leader, F.V. Hayden, met Jackson at this time and hired him to be the official photographer of the Hayden Survey. Jackson's photographs of Yellowstone from the early 1870s aided in its becoming the nation's first National Park. In 1879, his work for the Hayden survey ended and he opened a studio in Denver. Jackson's landscape/railroad work made in Colorado for the railroad companies was the primary source of the views he distributed from his Denver studio in the 1880s. By then Jackson had become the most famous photographer in America and like Carleton Watkins and Eadward Muybridge, one of a handful of artists who used mammoth plate negatives.

Another similar print of this at Getty Museum http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/50194/william-henry-jackson-dale-creek-bridge-union-pacific-railway-american-1885/

Fair to Good. Print has generally good tones with some overall yellowing and vertical streaks from the original wood frame are visible in the image. Minor soiling wear and abrasions on print, mount board has severe wear paper and glue residue edge chipping and missing parts, stains and the back of the mount discoloration from the original wood backing. Overall condition is poor to fair