Yellowstone Falls

This albumen silver print captures Yellowstone Falls in 1870, made during William Henry Jackson's landmark participation in Ferdinand Hayden's U.S. government geological survey of the Yellowstone River region. Jackson was brought on at the last minute as the expedition's official photographer, and what he returned with would change American history: the first photographic documentation of the Yellowstone wilderness. His images — including this dramatic view of the falls — played a direct role in convincing Congress to establish Yellowstone as the United States' first national park in March 1872.

To make this photograph, Jackson endured extraordinary conditions. Working with the wet-collodion process, he had to coat, expose, and develop heavy glass plates entirely on-site before the emulsion dried — sometimes using hot spring water to speed drying. His photographic team of five to seven men hauled fragile glass plates and a portable darkroom on mule-back through roadless, rugged terrain. Every frame was a gamble of timing and guesswork, with no light meters and exposure times ranging from seconds to minutes. That this luminous, precisely composed image survived at all is a testament to Jackson's remarkable skill and persistence. It stands as one of the earliest photographic records of one of America's most iconic natural wonders.