William Henry Jackson was an explorer, photographer, and artist. He is
also one of those most often overlooked figures of the American West.
His larger claim to fame involves his repeated forays into the western
lands of nineteenth-century America as a photographer. Jackson's life
spanned multiple incarnations of the American West. In a sense, he
played a singular role in revealing the West to eastern Americans. While
others opened the frontier with the axe and the rifle, Jackson did so
with his collection of cameras. He dispelled the geological myths
through a lens no one could deny or match. His wet plate collodion
prints not only helped to reframe the nation's image of the West, but
they also enticed businessmen, investors, scientists, and even tourists
to venture into the western regions of the United States. Prior to
Jackson's widely circulated photographs, the American West was little
understood and unmapped--mysterious lands that required a camera and a
cameraman to reveal their secrets and, ultimately, provide the first
photographic record of such exotic destinations as Yellowstone, Mesa
Verde, and the Rocky Mountains. Jackson's story was long and his life
full, as he lived to the enviable age of 99. This biography presents the
good, bad, and ugly of Jackson's life, both personal and professional,
through the use primary source materials, including Jackson's
autobiographies, letters, and government reports on the Hayden Surveys.
