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Master of the Columbia Photography by Carleton E

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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 190 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- OHQ vol. 109, no. 3 © 2008 Oregon Historical Society All images from Oregon Historical Society Research Library Org. Lot 9 OHS neg., OrHi OrHi OHS neg., 702 7 Carleton E. Watkins, Clearing the channel, Cascades, Columbia River, Oregon (Boudoir D161), 1883 Friedel, Master of the Columbia 5 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. 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”); 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. 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 188 ton Library, the Library of Congress, and during the winter of 188–1885. 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 6 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 188. 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. , 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 7 7 216 OHS neg., OrHi 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, 188, a blizzard hit the was best known for. These images of Columbia River Gorge and stranded the Gorge’s natural splendor include 18 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 8 OHQ vol.
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