Master of the Columbia Photography by Carleton E

Research files

Master of the Columbia Photography by Carleton E. Watkins at the Oregon Historical Society

by Megan K. Friedel

On June 23, 1916, Carleton but on April 18, 1906, further disaster E. Watkins, the great landscape pho- struck: a devastating earthquake and tographer of the American West, died fire destroyed the city of San Francisco blind and penniless in the Napa State and Watkins’s entire studio, including Hospital for the Insane in northern his life’s work, along with it.1 California. Aside from a few small, It was an ignominious end for a mostly unfinished projects during man who had produced some of the the early 1890s, Watkins took few grandest and most celebrated land- photographs in the last decades of his scape views of the West during the life — and nothing on the scale of his nineteenth century and who revo- earlier masterpieces of Yosemite and lutionized the practice of landscape the Columbia River Gorge. The pho- photography with his large-format tographer’s health had declined so pre- mammoth-plate prints. Shortly after cipitously by 1903 that he was almost Watkins’s death, his close friend, the completely blind and unable to work. San Francisco photographer Charles Similarly, Watkins’s finances, never his Beebe Turrill, attempted to resurrect strong suit, were in disarray. He sold public interest in his colleague’s work. few photographs at all after 1890, and Turrill’s essay, “An Early California though a selection of his prints was Photographer: C.E. Watkins,” was the exhibited at the Lewis & Clark Centen- first published biography of the pho- nial Exposition in Portland during the tographer, appearing in the January summer of 1905, he was never paid for 1918 issue of News Notes of California the work. Friends tried to help Watkins Libraries, an imprint of the California negotiate a sale of his negative and State Library. The article was a reprint print collection to Stanford University, of text Turrill had written to accom-

Carleton E. Watkins, Clearing the channel, Cascades, Columbia River, Oregon (Boudoir D161), 1883

Friedel, Master of the Columbia  pany a catalog of Watkins’s “New influence and importance, little seri- Series” stereoscopic photographs ous scholarship was published about for the library, and his intention was Watkins until the mid 1970s.4 to bring notice to the scope of the The Oregon Historical Society photographer’s life work as well as to began actively collecting the pho- its place in historical scholarship. As tographs of Carleton Watkins well the editor’s introductory note states, before he was rediscovered by schol- “it is believed that the work of Mr ars. Today, it holds one of the most Watkins was a valuable one for Cali- significant collections of Watkins fornia, and also that it is well to draw material in the nation. Housed at the the attention of California libraries Oregon Historical Society Research to the worth of these stereoscopic Library, the collection includes 268 views, some of which every library stereoscopic photographs (commonly might have.”2 known as “stereoviews”); 43 other Turrill’s article is notable not only card-type photographs, including for being the first substantive account cartes de visite, cabinet cards, and of Watkins’s accomplishments but also boudoir cards; 100 mammoth-plate because of the audience for whom it photographs; 2 photograph albums; was intended. Turrill turned first to and several loose-plate prints.5 Many libraries, as opposed to private art of the Watkins photographs at the collectors, as the most fitting places society, especially the mammoth prints to preserve Watkins’s work. In doing and early stereoviews, are signed by the so, he brought to light the historical, photographer himself, and all of the rather than the artistic, significance of titles and numbers of the mammoth- the California State Library’s collec- plate photographs are written in pencil tion of Watkins’s stereoviews. Turrill in his own hand. donated many of his own stereoviews What makes the Oregon Historical to the Society of California Pioneers, Society’s archival collection especially including seventy-five glass-plate remarkable is the large number of negatives that had been stored at his Watkins’s photographs of Oregon home instead of at Watkins’s studio and the Columbia River Gorge. Wat- during the 1906 earthquake and thus kins first came to the Oregon in 1867 were saved from destruction.3 Many to photograph the Gorge and the other institutions apparently followed settlements along the Willamette from Turrill’s lead; the Bancroft Library at Portland to Oregon City. He returned the University of California, Hunting- during the autumns of 1882 and 1883 ton Library, the Library of Congress, and during the winter of 1884–1885. and Stanford University today hold The society holds nearly all of the some of the most substantial collec- extant photographs that the photog- tions of Watkins material. Despite so rapher took on those voyages, making many libraries taking note of Watkins’s up the most comprehensive collection

 OHQ vol. 109, no. 3 of Watkins’s Oregon photographs ever gon and the Columbia River between assembled by an institution. These 1882 and 1885. One of these volumes include all but two of the fifty-nine is entitled Sun Sketches of Columbia rare mammoth-plate photographs River Scenery and was assembled by that Watkins took on his first expedi- Watkins after his travels to the river tion to Oregon in 1867, as well as a in 1882 and 1883. The photographs in complete set of the stereoviews that Sun Sketches revisit many of the land- he also made during the trip; these marks Watkins had photographed in photographs are the first substan- 1867 — Castle Rock, Multnomah Falls, tive images ever taken to document and the Cascades of the Columbia, to the Columbia River Gorge between name a few — but also explore new Vancouver, Washington, and Celilo.6 locations such as Oneonta Gorge and The collection also includes another Mitchell Point. After his previous trip, complete set of Watkins’s “New Series” in 1867, Watkins had not published stereoviews from his photographic any photographs of the stretch of surveys of the Columbia River during sheer precipices and basalt cliffs on the 1880s. (“New Series” refers to the the Oregon shore between what are work that Watkins completed after now Bonneville and The Dalles, as the 1875, when financial troubles forced Oregon Steam Navigation Co. (OSN) him to hand over his studio and his steamer he traveled on would have earlier negatives to creditor John Jay bypassed those locations on its way Cook and photographer Isaiah West east to its next landing at Dalles City. Tabor. Tabor printed these pre-1875 When Watkins returned in the fall of negatives under his own imprint, forc- 1882, however, a freshly completed ing Watkins to re-photograph many of railroad line from Portland all the way the earlier sites he had visited.7) Other to The Dalles, owned by the Oregon items of special note in the society’s Railway & Navigation Co. (OR&N), collection include three-part mam- had just opened that spring. Traveling moth panoramas of Portland and the those rails, the photographer could Willamette River and of Oregon City turn his attention to new landmarks, and Willamette Falls in 1867, the first especially man-made ones such as the such views ever to be made of those ongoing construction of the canal at areas, and boudoir cards documenting the Cascades, the salmon wheels used the blasting of the channel between in the blossoming fishwheel business Bradford Island and the Oregon side at the Cascades rapids, and Tunnel of the river during the construction No. 3, the OR&N’s tour-de-force, a of the locks at the Cascades of the 550-foot-long tunnel that had been Columbia in about 1882. blasted through the bluffs four miles The society’s collection also con- below Rooster Rock with fifty thou- tains two unique photograph albums sand pounds of dynamite in 1881.8 that detail Watkins’s voyages to Ore- But Sun Sketches does not focus on

Friedel, Master of the Columbia  3 7 OHS neg., OrHi 216 OrHi OHS neg.,

Carleton E. Watkins, The Summit of Mt. Hood from the Hood River Ascent (O.45), 1883

technological achievement alone; it tains images that Watkins could not also includes examples of the pure have planned to take in advance. On landscape photography that Watkins December 18, 1884, a blizzard hit the was best known for. These images of Columbia River Gorge and stranded the Gorge’s natural splendor include 148 passengers traveling on an OR&N one that Watkins had waited fifteen train. The locomotive, caught between years to make: a photograph of Mount drifts that reached heights of thirty Hood taken from its northern flank, to thirty-five feet, was stuck for three just the sort of photo that California weeks on the tracks at Viento, between geologist Josiah Whitney had com- Cascade Locks and Hood River. The missioned Watkins to make in 1867 passengers were not rescued until but that the photographer, stymied January 7, 1885. Though it is not known by the rugged and inaccessible Oregon exactly when he arrived in Oregon, interior, had failed to produce on his Watkins happened to be in Portland earlier visit.9 around the time of the storm, likely The second volume of photographs intending to travel on the OR&N and at the Oregon Historical Society Northern Pacific Railroad’s transconti- is untitled and, unlike those from nental lines from Portland to Montana his previous visits to Oregon, con- and thence onwards to photograph

 OHQ vol. 109, no. 3 Yellowstone National Park.10 Though the basalt cones at the base of Bridal the storm may have delayed those Veil Bluffs, stark against the wintery plans, the photographer made the landscape. most of the situation; he accompanied Though the bulk of the Oregon OR&N rescue workers to the snowed- Historical Society’s collection details in stretch between Rooster Rock and Watkins’s Oregon and Columbia River Oneonta Falls and photographed both photography, it is rounded out by a their attempts to dig out the tracks and judicious selection of photographs he the welcome arrival of relief trains took in his home state of California from The Dalles and Portland. At the and farther afield in other Western same time, Watkins was also able to states. The society holds mammoth capture the Gorge pictorially as it had prints of California coastal views of never been seen before: Oneonta and Mendocino and the Farrallon Islands; Multnomah Falls frozen, in words a series documenting the northern he later used to caption the resulting California peaks Mount Lola, Round photographs, like a “crystal veil;” the Top, and Mount Shasta; and three of river itself iced over; and the Needles, Watkins’s renowned views of Yosemite

Carleton E. Watkins, From Rooster Rock to Oneota Falls. Great Winter Storm of the Winter of 1884–5. Columbia River, Or. Lower Multnomah Fall (D.127), 1884–1885 OHS neg., OrHi 7016 4

Friedel, Master of the Columbia  OHS neg., OrHi 21657 OrHi OHS neg.,

Carleton E. Watkins, Sugar Loaf Islands, Farallons, 1869

dating from about 1878 to 1881. Other for the Central Pacific Railroad from significant California images include 1862 to 1869, and reprinted by Watkins carte de visite and stereoscopic pho- under his own name after 1870. tographs of the Mariposa Grove at The collection also contains exam- Yosemite — where Watkins took the ples of Watkins’s portraiture, an aspect first known photograph of the “Griz- of his commercial studio work that is zly Giant,” an ancient sequoia, in 1861 far less known than his landscape pho- — and stereoviews documenting the tography. Cabinet card photographs city of San Francisco from 1864 to 1877. at the society depict several American The society’s collection also includes financiers and businessmen, at least images from Watkins’s travels to Seat- one of whom played a role in making tle, Puget Sound, and Victoria in 1882; Watkins’s 1867 journey to the Colum- a series of stereoviews that he took of bia River Gorge possible. Simeon the Union Pacific Railroad in Utah in Gannett Reed (1830–1895), a Portland 1873; and another group of stereoviews entrepreneur, was one of the principal entitled “Watkins’ Pacific Railroad,” stockholders in the OSN, whose steam- which were originally taken by Alfred ers and railroads Watkins relied on for A. Hart, the official photographer his seminal journey to the Gorge in

 OHQ vol. 109, no. 3 1867. Reed had his photograph made directly to the personal relationships by Watkins sometime between 1871 that afforded Watkins the means to and 1875, in Watkins’s Montgomery produce such great work. Some of Street studio in San Francisco, and the the stereoviews of Oregon and the resulting cabinet card portrait in the Columbia River in the collection are society’s collection is inscribed with stamped with the imprint of Charles Reed’s signature. The other portraits Turrill and the Society of California in the collection include Cyrus West Pioneers, indicating that the images Field (1819–1892), who led the Atlantic were among those collected by Tur- Telegraph Company’s efforts to lay the rill during his first push to preserve first trans-Atlantic telegraph lines in Watkins’s stereoviews for posterity.11 1858 and 1866, and the entire family Other photographs at the society of Cornelius C. Beekman (1828–1915), have a more direct connection to the a banker from Jacksonville, Oregon, photographer’s time in Oregon. Frank including a stunning image of his wife Julia OHS image no. bb 00 Elizabeth Hoffman Beekman and two of their children. It is not known what, if 3 9 4 any, personal relation- 1 ship Watkins had with Field or the Beekmans. Like Reed’s portrait, Watkins made these photographs around 1871 to 1875, and it is possible his subjects simply came to visit his San Francisco studio, drawn by the great photographer’s grow- ing fame in the wake of his successful photographs of Yosemite and the Columbia River. Interestingly, the provenance of many of the photographs at the Oregon Historical Carleton E. Watkins, cabinet card portrait of Julia E. Society can be traced Hoffman Beekman, from about 1871–1875

Friedel, Master of the Columbia  B. Gill, historian for the Oregon- society’s collection. Both photograph Washington Railroad and Naviga- albums were originally owned by tion Company, included a number Charles H. Prescott (b. 1839), treasurer of Watkins photographs with a 1924 and manager of the OR&N from Oregon Historical Quarterly article 1881 to 1887, the period during which on the Oregon Portage Railroad. Gill Watkins returned to photograph the had obtained the images from Barbara Gorge. Each album is inscribed with Stevenson Bailey, sister of Watkins’s Prescott’s signature and the year he guide in the Gorge in 1867, who Gill acquired the album, 1884 for the Sun claimed owned a significant collection Sketches album and 1886 for the winter of Watkins’s photographs.12 Some of storm album. these photographs, including a rare Why Prescott owned these albums stereoview portrait of Barbara and her is unclear. Did Watkins gift them to family at their home on Eagle Creek, the OR&N in appreciation of financial are now in the society’s collection (see support they gave for his travels along page 394 of this issue of OHQ). the Columbia during 1882 to 1885? Did The society’s collection also reflects Prescott buy them on his own volition, the commercial relationships that out of regard for the photographer’s Watkins built in order to financially skill? Or were they simply works for sustain his interest in landscape pho- hire? Very little is known about Wat- tography, particularly his relationship kins’s movements and motivations with the burgeoning Western railroad in Oregon during his travels there in industry. Watkins’s trips to Oregon 1882 to 1885, and indeed, he makes for were likely sponsored by the railroad a slippery study in general. He was an and steamship companies that oper- imprecise documentarian, and part ated along the Columbia River — in of the struggle with interpreting Wat- 1867, by the OSN and, in the early kins’s photographs as primary-source 1880s, by the OR&N.13 Josiah Myrick, materials is that he often misattributed a former steamboat captain and stock- dates to his own works. As Turrill holder with the OSN, appears to have noted in his biography of Watkins, owned a large collection of Watkins’s the photographer “kept no definite photographs of the Columbia River, record on his negatives as to when and his wife, Maria Louisa Myrick, was they were taken and it was difficult in instrumental in founding the Oregon his old age for him to state definitely Historical Society. Sometime after when certain negatives were made.”14 Josiah’s death in 1906, his daughters To further complicate matters, there decided the society was a fitting home is little existing written record of for their father’s Watkins photographs. Watkins’s journeys at all, particularly The Myrick family donation indicates when it comes to where and how he the work Watkins did was appreciated traveled in the Pacific Northwest dur- and collected by those involved with ing the 1880s.15 From his letters to his the OSN, as do the two albums in the wife, Frances “Frankie” Watkins, and

 OHQ vol. 109, no. 3 a notice in the Oregonian newspaper, historian Peter Palmquist — from C.F. we know that the photographer was Newcombe, a visitor to The Dalles, to in Portland on September 19 and 20, his wife on November 18, 1883: “Wat- 1882.16 On September 22, a notice in kins the photographer who took my the Seattle Post Intelligencer places Yosemite views is here,” Newcombe him in Seattle, where he made some wrote. “He has a sleeping car to himself of his photographs of Puget Sound.17 and is put onto a siding wherever he In his September 19 letter to his wife, wishes.” Palmquist has also pointed Watkins indicated his intention to out that Watkins’s son, Collis, had photograph the Gorge only after his been born on October 4, 1883, so it trip north to Washington Territory was is possible that the photographer did completed. “I expect to get through not arrive in the Gorge until late Octo- with the Puget Sound work in about ber or early November of that year, ten days,” he wrote, “and then I have though we can be no more specific all that Columbia River work to do than that.19 and the Lord knows when I will get As with any photographer, there through with that.” Since, according is also the question of what Carleton to historian Peter Palmquist, Watkins Watkins did not photograph. Most left Oregon on October 11 on board Oregonians can easily notice the the steamer California bound for San most significant gap in his series of Francisco, it appears that Watkins must images of the Columbia River Gorge: have created some of the Sun Sketches photographs of Celilo Falls. Watkins and “New Series” photographs of the traveled the entire OSN route from Columbia River Gorge in late Septem- Portland to Celilo in 1867 and the same ber and early October of 1882.18 route on the OR&N in 1882 and 1883. True to form, however, Watkins On both trips, he would have passed did not publish dates with any of the and noted the rushing tumult of the images he took during this trip, nor falls, especially as it was one of the two did he date those he made during a major impasses to boat traffic on that third trip to Oregon during the fall of eighty-four-mile section of the Gorge. 1883. The photographs from the two Watkins extensively photographed the trips are often published together, as rocky channel of the Cascades and the in the Sun Sketches album and “New railroads’ efforts to circumnavigate its Series” stereoviews at the Oregon rapids. Likewise, he published images Historical Society, and it is therefore of the railroad lines that bypassed the difficult to determine on which trip churning waters at Celilo. So it is odd Watkins made each image. Even less is indeed that Watkins appears to have understood about the photographer’s taken no photos of the falls itself. whereabouts in Oregon during 1883. One can only speculate on the The only known written record of absence of images of Celilo Falls. It is Watkins’s presence on the Columbia possible that Watkins, who seems to is a letter — first brought to light by have avoided photographing Native

Friedel, Master of the Columbia  people living along the Columbia sight that scholars of history and art on any of his trips to the Gorge, also alike would one day recognize Carleton avoided the seasonal Indian fishing Watkins as a great master of American villages at Celilo. It is also possible landscape photography. Watkins’s (though unlikely, given the lengths photos at the society play three roles. he went to climb the rocky narrows On one level, they document the of the Passage of the Dalles to pho- changing face of Oregon — and, by tograph its straits) that he could not extension, the whole of the American find an easily reachable vantage point West — during the mid nineteenth from which to take a suitable image century, as rapid-fire technological of Celilo. Watkins traveled with hun- developments allowed people to har- dreds of fragile glass plate negatives ness the natural power of landscapes with which to make his photographs; like the Columbia River Gorge. On undoubtedly, in the course of hauling another, they are specimens of the rare them back and forth along the river’s and skillful eye for the natural land- rails and steamer passages, many were scape that Watkins possessed, allow- broken and lost, and perhaps those of ing his combination of innovation Celilo were among them. Perhaps most and artistry to make even the dullest likely, Celilo may simply have made mountainside a breathtaking precipice. a visually uninteresting study for the Finally, they offer a window into the photographer. Watkins would have particular relationship that Watkins reached the falls sometime between kept with Oregon and the Columbia August and November of 1867 and River for over eighteen years. Whether at the same time during 1882 or 1883, it was a personal relationship or simply when river levels would have been low a marriage of convenience — a way to enough that Celilo may have looked milk a few more dollars from the rail- like just another series of rocky shoals road industry — we may never know. in the narrows of the Dalles rather Whatever Watkins’s motivations for than the rushing cascade it was come returning again and again to Oregon, springtime. Without further scholarly the Carleton E. Watkins photographs exploration, however, we cannot know collection at the Oregon Historical for sure why no photographs of Celilo Society is, in its own right, one of Falls exist today in Watkins’s photo- the most stunning collections of the graphs of Oregon and the Columbia photographer’s work ever assembled River Gorge. and some of the most comprehensive Nevertheless, the Oregon Historical visual documentation of the Columbia Society’s collection is a testament to the River Gorge at a turning point in the power of Charles Beebe Turrill’s fore- river’s history.

 OHQ vol. 109, no. 3 notes

1. Peter Palmquist, Carleton E. Watkins: 9. Palmquist, Carleton E. Watkins, 33. Photographer of the American West 10. Ibid., 74. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico 11. Accession records at the Oregon Press for the Amon Carter Museum, 1983), Historical Society indicate that the 80–83. Society of California Pioneers (SCP) 2. Charles Beebe Turrill, “An Early donated thirty-three stereoviews to OHS California Photographer: C.E. Watkins,” in 1960. It is likely that the SCP gifted News Notes of California Libraries, 13:1 these photographs to the OHS because (January 1918): 29. they depicted locations in Oregon, not 3. Eric Hill, “Carleton Watkins,” Stereo California, and thus might have been World 41:1 (March-April 1977): 5. considered out-of-scope for the SCP’s 4. Weston Naef, Era of Exploration: collections. The Rise of Landscape Photography in 12. Frank B. Gill, “Oregon’s First the American West, 1860–1885 (Buffalo: Railway: The Oregon Portage Railroad at Albert-Knox Art Gallery, 1975), was the the Cascades of the Columbia River,” The first published scholarly examination of Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society Watkins’s work. It was soon followed by 25:3 (September 1924): 172. James Alinder, ed., with essays by David 13. Douglas R. Nickel, Carleton Watkins: Featherstone and Russ Anderson, Carleton The Art of Perspective (San Francisco: San E. Watkins: Photographs of the Columbia Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1999), River and Oregon (Carmel, Calif.: Friends 14–15. of Photography, 1979); and Palmquist, 14. Turrill, “An Early California Carleton E. Watkins. Photographer,” 31. 5. These photographs are located in 15. Palmquist, Carleton E. Watkins, 70. the Carleton E. Watkins photographs, Org. 16. Carleton E. Watkins to Frances Lot 93, at the Oregon Historical Society Watkins, September 19, 1882, in Carleton Research Library, Portland. A guide to Emmons Watkins letters, BANC MSS the collection is available at http://nwda- 78/92 c, at the Bancroft Library, University db.wsulibs.wsu.edu/findaid/ark:/80444/ of California-Berkeley; Watkins is listed xv99202. in the “Hotel Arrivals” for the Esmond 6. The two mammoth-plate Hotel in the Oregonian, September 20, photographs that the society does not have 1882, p. 4. are Mammoth #420, Cape Horn, Columbia 17. Quoted in Palmquist, Carleton E. River, and Mammoth #440, Islands in the Watkins, 72. Columbia, Upper Cascades. 18. Ibid. 7. See Palmquist, Carleton E. Watkins, 19. Charles Frederick Newcombe to 51–53 Marion Newcombe, November 18, 1883, 8. Eugene Virgil Smalley, History of in the Newcombe family fonds, MS-1077, the Northern Pacific Railroad (New York: British Columbia Archives. Quoted in Putnam, 1883), 423. Palmquist, Carleton E. Watkins, 73.

Friedel, Master of the Columbia 