The Big Picture

The Big Picture Thomas Moran’s The Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone and the Development of the American West Diana Seave Greenwald The success of Thomas Moran’s The Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone (1872) was linked not only with tourism and Yellowstone Nation Park’s foundation but with the national debate about Western development. Formal analysis contrasts Moran’s sublime landscape in flux with Bierstadt’s and Gifford’s depictions of frontier landscapes as habitable wilderness. Although the Northern Pacific Railroad promoted settlement as a reliable source of revenue, the spectacular painting resulting from its support of Moran’s 1871 trip to Yellowstone instead showed the limitations of the homesteading model in a mountainous and arid Western landscape more suitable for mining and logging than for farming. EASURING 7 feet tall by 12 feet wide, cific Railroad’s (NPRR) sponsorship of Moran’s The Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone (1872; trip to Yellowstone in exchange for several water- M fig. 1) is monumental. Only a handful colors depicting the area.1 Scholars assume that of tiny human figures stand in the foreground of this transaction was intended to cultivate the im- the painting. The men are dwarfed by their sur- age of Yellowstone—declared the country’s first roundings, indicating that, despite its size, the can- national park in 1872—as a tourist destination. vas only hints at the colossal proportions of the ac- This article argues that the NPRR sent an artist tual site. However, Moran does not sacrifice detail to Montana Territory to create images of both for scale. Distinct veins of pink, orange, and yellow spectacular wilderness for tourists and of habit- run through rock formations; individual needles able wilderness for settlement—images resonant are visible on the pine trees’ branches; and the of the ideals expressed in the 1862 Homestead mist around the waterfall is not a uniform color Act. To suit its own commercial goals, the NPRR but a range of whites tinged gray, blue, and yel- needed to portray the Yellowstone Valley as a West- low. This painting—just like the site it depicts—is ern Eden that one should not just visit, but settle. marvelous. Moran affectionately called it his “Big After a brief literature review and discussion of Picture.” methods, the article introduces the Homestead The existing secondary literature describes The Act—the principal blueprint for the settlement Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone as an image of spec- of the West from 1862. This blueprint—an exten- tacular wilderness, of a wondrous landscape ready‐ sion of land policies dating to the end of the eigh- made and destined to be packaged as a tourist at- teenth century—came into question as it was ap- traction and a source of voyeuristic enjoyment. plied to environments in the mountainous West This theory is compounded by the Northern Pa- not suited for arable agriculture.2 The Northern Pacific Railroad’s attempts to develop the Yellow- Diana Seave Greenwald is a doctoral candidate in history at stone Valley despite its geographic and geological the University of Oxford. challenges are considered using period maps. The The author is grateful for the guidance and support provided for this project by Elizabeth Hutchinson, Eleanor Jones Harvey, and the Winterthur Academic Programs staff, particularly Amy Earls and Rosemary Krill. Thank you to Ava Seave for her skill as 1 Joni L. Kinsey, Thomas Moran and the Surveying of the American perpetual editor and interlocutor. West (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), 190. © 2015 by The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, 2 “Homestead Act,” Homestead Act of 1862 ( January 7, 2009), Inc. All rights reserved. 0084-0416/2016/4904-0002$10.00 1. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost. 176 Winterthur Portfolio 49:4 1 Fig. 1. Thomas Moran, The Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone, 1872. Oil on canvas; H. 8400,W.144 =400. (Smithsonian American Art Museum, lent by the Department of the Interior Museum; photo, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC/Art Resource, NY.) article examines the specific artistic needs of the permutation of the same conclusion: Yellowstone NPRR and the process by which it selected an artist is a wonderland, an American treasure to be pre- to paint Yellowstone in the light of this legislative served, admired, and celebrated. The painting acted and railroad‐building framework for development. as a stand‐in for the site it portrayed and was, there- It then compares Moran and his depiction of fore, a flashpoint for awestruck and patriotic emo- the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone with Albert tions. Bierstadt’s paintings of the Rocky Mountains and Scholars have reached this common conclu- Yosemite Valley and the latter location’s initial rail- sion because they approach the painting equipped road development. The article concludes with ex- with a common vision of its historical context. They tended formal analyses of The Grand Cañon of the primarily situate The Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone Yellowstone and close readings of contemporary crit- in one distinct narrative—the development of na- ical reactions to further explore connections be- ture tourism in the United States. The story pro- tween legislative debate over Western development ceeds roughly as follows: the first natural attractions and Moran’s painting. In particular, this article were the Catskills, White Mountains, and Niagara argues that Moran created an image of a frontier Falls beginning in the 1830s; tourism‐related activity in flux that reflected the debated and heteroge- then moved West to the Yosemite Valley in the late neous plans proposed for the development of the 1850s–60s. Tourism arrived in Montana in 1872 American West during and in the decade after when Congress passed the Yellowstone National the Civil War. Park Protection Act (hereafter National Park Pro- tection Act) establishing Yellowstone as the first national park.3 At each of these stages, there was Beyond Tourism and the National Park In the sizable secondary literature dedicated to 3 An overview of this literature is presented in Gail S. Da- vidson, “Landscape Icons, Tourism, and Land Development in The Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone and its extraor- the Northeast,” in Frederic Church, Winslow Homer and Thomas dinary popularity, most scholars have reached some Moran: Tourism and the American Landscape, ed. Barbara Bloemink, The Big Picture 177 a “Great Picture”—an enormous oil painting viewed other was lack of transportation infrastructure. in a dramatic solo exhibition complete with cur- The new law preserved “all timber, mineral depos- tains and pamphlets—to portray and publicize the its, natural curiosities, or wonders within said park, latest natural phenomenon.4 According to this nar- and their retention in their natural condition” rative, the development of nature tourism and the and established the park area as a “pleasuring‐ success of Great Pictures share a common root. ground” for the public.7 It did not, however, allo- They are linked to an emerging interest in spectac- cate any money to do this. In 1872 tourism may ular viewing experiences. This pursuit of the spec- have been on the minds of Moran and other men tacular is fueled not only by an interest in travel involved with the painting and the establishment and novel landscapes, but also by a growing sense of the park, but given the area’s isolation and lack of patriotism grounded in the magnificent Ameri- of infrastructure, it is unlikely that tourism was can landscape. As Barbara Novak first argued, the the primary focus of those developing the Yellow- history of the United States could not rival the glo- stone Valley in the 1870s. The NPRR did not reach ries of the European past, but the mountains, water- nearby Garrison, Montana, until 1883.8 In 1871, falls, valleys, and canyons of the West were grander after traveling to Montana to report on mining de- and more wondrous than their European counter- velopment, US Commissioner of Mine and Mining parts.5 Statistics Rossiter Raymond concluded: “When it is This scholarly narrative is not without merit. considered with what difficulty and expense com- Americans’ interest in seeking out spectacular nat- munication, travel and transportation are main- ural phenomena—either by traveling to sites in tained between the Territory of Montana and the person or traveling virtually by viewing a Great Pic- rest of the world, it seems marvelous that anyone ture—increased exponentially during the nine- should come there or stop there at all.”9 The tour- teenth century.6 This trend in nature tourism is ism narrative is not sufficient to account for the relevant to the creation of Yellowstone National valley’s development. Park and the success of Moran’s painting, but it Yellowstone National Park is just one corner of is not the only relevant historical context. the Yellowstone River Valley, a fertile and mineral‐ In the early 1870s, the Yellowstone Valley’s fate rich area surrounded by arid and mostly desolate was uncertain. No one actively tried to encourage territory. The NPRR, which had a federal charter and accommodate Yellowstone tourism until years to lay track from Minnesota to Washington Terri- after the debut of The Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone tory, could profit enormously from the valley’s de- and the passage of the National Parks Protection velopment. Large amounts of sustainable revenue Act. One reason was a lack of federal funding; an- for the railroad would come from establishing agriculture, logging, and mining—and settlements created by people working in these industries— on land only made accessible by rail. The NPRR Sarah Burns, Gail S. Davidson, Karal Ann Marling, and Floramae McCarron‐Cates (New York: Bulfinch, 2006), 3–75; John F.

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