Sun Pictures of Rocky Mountain Scenery, With a Description of the Geographical and Geological Features, and Some Account of the Resources of the Great West; Containing Thirty Photographic Views Along the Line of the Pacific Rail Road, from Omaha to Sacramento

New York: Julius Bien. Printed by the New York Lithographing, Engraving, and Printing Company, 16 and 18 Park Place, 1870. 4to. (12 x 9 1/2 inches). Edition of 50. [i]-viii [1]-150. 158 pp. 30 numbered and card-mounted albumen silver photographic prints with printed titles. Half-title, Photo of Moore's Lake, Title printed red and black, List of Views, Table of Contents, Introductory, Chapters I-VII, Photographs II-XXX. Green half morocco over green cloth boards, five raised bands forming six gilt-ruled compartments with gilt lettering in second and fourth and gilt device in rest, all edges gilt, tan endpapers

A key early photobook on the American West, with albumen photographs by Russell, whose work "stands alongside Eadweard Muybridge in its aesthetic power and technical virtuosity." - Oakland Museum of California Art

This impressive, rare book, an important work of photographically illustrated Western Americana, was prepared by the famous geologist, Ferdinand V. Hayden. It is an amalgam of geographic and geologic data, complemented with striking, dramatic landscape photographs taken along the rail-line of the Transcontinental Railroad. The photographs, taken by Russell, appeared in a slightly larger format the previous year in his unobtainable album, The Great West Illustrated. The views along the Union Pacific line are intended to illustrate the geology which can be observed from the train. Despite the title, all the photographs are of areas within the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada, with twelve in Wyoming, sixteen in Utah, and two in California. Hayden wrote: "The pictures have been arranged so as to commence with the first range of mountains west of Cheyenne, and to continue thence to the Salt Lake Valley with the view that the book may be used as a guide by those who will avail themselves of the grand opportunities for geological study." "In using Russell's photographs as illustrations in Sun Pictures of Rocky Mountain Scenery, geologist Hayden took the long view of history, emphasizing the value of pictures as documents of geological change while professing indifference to the more recent past. For Hayden, the geologic features of the West were like an open book, affording the educated reader the opportunity to understand millions of years of geologic history." [Sandweiss] Russell ranks as one of the major landscape photographers who shaped our perception of the American West in the 19th Century. During the Civil War, Russell worked for Mathew Brady and served as a captain in the U.S. Military Railroad Construction Corps. In 1865, he became the official photographer for the Union Pacific Railroad, and documented the building of the Transcontinental Railroad during the years 1868-1869. At Promontory he photographed the meeting of the trains (U.P. No. 119 and Jupiter) on the tracks. After his work with the Union Pacific, Russell was a photographer for the Clarence King Survey and later worked for Frank Leslie's Illustrated Weekly. This survey expedition includes many of Russell's iconic landscape views in which he often juxtaposed monumental geological elements to manmade structures and individual men and women. According to a note by James Stevenson in the copy reviewed in Margolis, only fifty copies of this book were issued. Stevenson may have had some inside knowledge, as he worked with Hayden, who was its director, on the U.S. Geological and Geographic Survey of the Territories. Such works illustrated with original photographs were rarely issued in great numbers due to the great expense in materials and labor to create such books. The photographs are as follows: I. Moore's Lake. II. Granite Rock. III. Skull Rock. IV. Malloy's Cut. V. Dial Rock. VI. Laramie Valley. VII. Snow and Timber Line. VIII. High Bluffs. IX. Bitter Creek Valley. X. Burning Rock Cut. XI. Citadel Rock. XII. Castle Rock. XIII. Church Buttes. XIV. Lake at the Head of Bear River. XV. Conglomerate Peaks of Echo. XVI. Sentinel Rock. XVII. Hanging Rock. XVIII. Coalville. XIX. Thousand Mile Tree. XX. Wilhemina's Pass. XXI. Serrated Rocks or Devil's Slide. XXII. Tunnel No. 3. XXIII. Devil's Gate. XXIV. City Creek Canyon. XXV. Wasatch Range of Rocky Mountains. XXVI. Salt Lake City. XXVII. Great Mormon Tabernacle. XXVIII. Trestle Work. XXIX. Summit of the Sierra Nevada. XXX. Hydraulic Gold Mining.

Boni, Photographic Literature, p.143. Flake/Draper 3920. Foster, Life of Hayden, pp.195-198. Howes H337. Margolis, To Delight the Eye 7. Nickles 471. Oakland Museum of California. Reese, Best of the West 180. Sabin 31007. Sandweiss 177. Truthful Lens 81. VanHaaften 215.