by Tom Clavin
This year is the 150th anniversary of the taking of one of the most famous photographs of the American West, an image of a natural feature known as the Mount of the Holy Cross. This was accomplished during an expedition led by two remarkable 19th-century explorers.
One of them was Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden. He was born in September 1829 in Westfield, Massachusetts. His original vocation was medicine. After graduating from Oberlin College and then the Albany Medical College, he attracted the notice of Professor James Hall, the state geologist of New York. Through Hall’s influence he was induced to join in an exploration of the Nebraska Territory to study geology and collect fossils. Having enjoyed the experience, Hayden next set out on his own. With a partial sponsorship from the Smithsonian Institution, he set off on various exploring and collecting expeditions in the northern Missouri River areas.
In 1856 and 1857, Hayden accompanied exploration expeditions led by Lieutenant Gouverneur Warren and afterward, one led by Captain William Raynolds. One result of the expedition was his groundbreaking Geological Report of the Exploration of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers in 1859–1860. During the Civil War, Hayden served as an army surgeon. He rose to be chief medical officer of the Army of the Shenandoah and by the war’s end, he was a lieutenant colonel.
Then it was back to exploring. He led geographic and geologic surveys of the Nebraska and Western Territories for the U.S. government as well as treks into the Rocky Mountains. In 1869, he led an expedition along the Front Range to Denver and Santa Fe. The following year, he received a $25,000 government grant to lead a 20-man expedition to South Pass, Fort Bridger, Henry’s Fork, and back to Cheyenne, Wyoming. To measure distances during their journeys into the western frontier Hayden employed the use of an odometer. The device was mounted on a mule-drawn cart that measured distances as the cartwheels rolled along. Because of rough terrain, the device was accurate to within about 3 percent.
In 1871, Hayden led America’s first federally funded geologic survey into the Yellowstone region of northwestern Wyoming. The survey consisted of some 50 men who included notables such as Thomas Moran, the painter, and the young but already famous photographer William Henry Jackson. The following year, Hayden and his work, Preliminary Report of the United States Geological Survey of Montana and Portions of Adjacent Territories; Being a Fifth Annual Report of Progress, was instrumental in convincing Congress to establish Yellowstone as the first U.S. National Park, aided by Jackson’s stunning large-format photographs and Moran’s dramatic paintings. Unhappily for the indigenous inhabitants, these efforts also encouraged the westward expansion of the United States.
About William Henry Jackson: He was born in Keeseville, New York, in April 1843 to George Hallock Jackson and Harriet Maria Allen. Harriet, a talented watercolorist, was a graduate of the Troy Female Seminary. Painting was William’s passion from a young age. By age 19, he had become a skillful, talented artist of American pre-Civil War visual arts. The war interrupted his studies. He enlisted as a private in Company K of the 12th Vermont Infantry of the Union Army. Jackson spent much of his free time sketching drawings of his friends and various scenes of Army camp life that he sent home to his family as his way of letting them know he was safe. He fought in the Battle of Gettysburg, and soon after his regiment mustered out. Jackson then returned to Vermont, where he worked as an artistic painter. After a failed romance, he decided to leave Rutland.
In 1866, Jackson boarded a Union Pacific Train and took it to the end of the line, which was then Omaha. He joined a wagon train headed to the Great Salt Lake, working as a bullwhacker (a driver of a wagon pulled by oxen). The next year, he returned to Omaha and entered the photography business. On ventures that often lasted for several days, Jackson acted as a sort of missionary to the Indian tribes in the area, and his photographs earned him a national reputation. This led, in 1869, to a commission from the Union Pacific to document the scenery along the various railroad routes for promotional purposes. When his work was discovered by Ferdinand Hayden, who was organizing a geologic survey to explore the Yellowstone River region, Jackson was asked to join the expedition.
The two men hit it off and participated together in several surveys and other explorations through the American West. As official photographer on these journeys, Jackson was in a position to capture the first photographs of legendary landmarks west of the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains. As mentioned earlier, these photographs played an important role in convincing Congress in 1872 to establish Yellowstone National Park. His involvement with Hayden’s expeditions established his reputation as one of the most accomplished explorers of the American continent.
Jackson worked in multiple camera and plate sizes, under conditions that were often incredibly difficult. His photography was based on the collodion process invented in 1848. He traveled with as many as three camera types—a stereographic camera (for stereoscope cards), a “whole-plate” or 8×10″ plate-size camera, and one even larger, 18×22″. These cameras required fragile, heavy glass plates, which had to be coated, exposed, and developed onsite before the collodion emulsion dried. Without light metering equipment or sure emulsion speeds, exposure times required inspired guesswork—between five seconds and twenty minutes depending on light conditions. Preparing, exposing, developing, fixing, washing then drying a single image could take the better part of an hour.
The photographic equipment was carried on the backs of mules while he carried a rifle—his military service and his peaceful dealings with Indians were welcomed on these treks. Once when a mule lost its footing, Jackson lost a month’s work, having to return to untracked Rocky Mountain landscapes to remake the pictures.
This mishap was what provided an opportunity for a new photograph—that of the Mount of the Holy Cross.
Jackson had heard rumors of a natural cross of snow that supposedly appeared every summer on the face of a high peak in the mountains. In August 1873, he and a small group of equipment-bearers peeled off from Hayden’s expedition and traveled to the north-central Colorado area. Just before dawn on the 24th, Jackson carried as much of his equipment as he could up the face of a mountain opposite the alleged cross. When the sun appeared, lo and behold, there it was, and Jackson photographed it. When the image was published in Harper’s Weekly, it was a national sensation.
How is the cross formed every year? It appears when snow melts on two ravines that form a 90-degree angle. The full melt does not occur until late August because the ravines have sheltered it from the sun long after the rest of the snow on the mountain has melted. Below is the image Jackson captured.
Originally published on Tom Clavin’s The Overlook.
Tom Clavin is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and has worked as a newspaper editor, magazine writer, TV and radio commentator, and a reporter for The New York Times. He has received awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, Marine Corps Heritage Foundation, and National Newspaper Association. His books include the bestselling Frontier Lawmen trilogy—Wild Bill, Dodge City, and Tombstone—and Blood and Treasure with Bob Drury. He lives in Sag Harbor, NY.
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