William Henry Jackson: A Visual Exploration of the American West

Jackson became the first person to photograph Yellowstone's Old Faithful geyser, so it is no coincidence that 63 years later, he painted himself into the background of this painting as the figure setting up the camera equipment. Shown riding the lead horse in the foreground grouping is geologist and survey expedition leader Ferdinand Hayden (1829–1887), followed by Nathaniel P. Langford (1832–1911) on the white horse, and artist Thomas Moran (1837–1926) with a sketchpad tucked under his arm. Jackson took artistic license with this composite scene; Moran was on the 1871 expedition but not the 1872 expedition in which Jackson photographed Old Faithful. And while Langford was never part of the 1871 expedition, he went Yellowstone in 1870, returned with the Hayden Survey in 1872, and would serve as Yellowstone National Park's first superintendent from 1872 to 1877.

Jackson's 1936 painting is an imagined moment from John Wesley Powell's 16-month survey expedition of the Colorado River begun in 1871. The scene is northern Arizona's Marble Canyon. The figures in the left foreground are Powell’s brother-in-law and chief topographer Almon Thompson (1839–1906); expedition leader John Wesley Powell (1834–1902); and 18-year-old artist and assistant cartographer Frederick Dellenbaugh (1853–1935). In the middle foreground are two dories. The one with Powell’s armchair strapped on top is the Emma Dean, named for Powell’s wife. At the right are two men by a campfire, possibly S. V. Jones, Andy Hattan, or Powell’s cousin Walter Clement Powell. The man tending to the camera apparatus at the far right is likely John K. Hillers (1843–1925), successor to expedition photographer E. O. Beaman. The final figure, seated on a rock by the river’s edge, is presumed to be Ellen “Nellie” Powell Thompson (1840–1911), sister of John Wesley Powell and wife of Almon Thompson. She was a noted botanist who often accompanied her husband in the field.

The United States Congress authorized First Lieutenant George M. Wheeler (1842–1905)—a West Point graduate serving with the Army Corps of Engineers—to survey lands west of the 100th meridian (100 degrees west longitude) at a scale of eight miles to the inch for the purpose of creating topographical maps. Between 1872 and 1879, the Wheeler Survey ambitiously charted in excess of 300,000 square miles, mostly in California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado. Additionally, scientist and scholars collected more than 100,000 natural history specimens and documented the languages of Puebloan cultures.

Led by geologist Clarence King (1842–1901), the King Survey conducted fieldwork from 1867 to 1872 above the 40th Parallel (40 degrees north latitude) in the American West. The expedition specifically focused on northern California, Nevada, and Utah; southern Idaho; and eastern Wyoming. The published results were in eight volumes covering geology, paleontology, botany, petrography, mining, and more. In 1879, King would become the first director of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), allowing him to shape the nation’s first civilian government science agency and further the practice of Federal geology. Today, the library at the USGS headquarters in Reston, Virginia, bears King’s name.