Last updated: August 24, 2026
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William Henry Jackson Virtual Exhibit
NPS/William Henry Jackson, 1872
Scotts Bluff National Monument, SCBL 1047
Welcome to the William Henry Jackson Virtual Exhibit. This exhibit celebrates the life and work of William Henry Jackson (1843 – 1942), preeminent photographer of the American West. His larger-than-life career spanned studio photographer, bullwhacker on the Oregon Trail, to renowned explorer, and left an indelible impression on American history.
This exhibit was originally researched and developed by the National Park Service Museum Management Program and consists of five sections (Early Life, Expeditions, Later Life, Photographic Process, and A Thank You to Bob Blair). Each of first four sections highlights a portion of Jackson's life or the photographic techniques that he used to produce his images. At the bottom of each of these sections is one or more galleries of images associated with that aspect of Jackson's life or craft.
Jackson's landscape photography from the 1870s is intertwined with the establishment of the National Park Service. He was one of the first to photograph Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, and the Mesa Verde region. These photographs were integral to convincing Congress and the American public of the need to preserve these landscapes as national parks.
Decades after his expeditions ended, Jackson continued to photograph, paint, and draw his travels. Excerpts from his diaries and autobiographies, found throughout the exhibit, reveal his characteristic wit. Images featured in this exhibit are from the William Henry Jackson Collection at Scotts Bluff National Monument, among the world's largest collections of Jackson's work.
Albumen print on paper. H 10.7, W 6.2 cm
Scotts Bluff National Monument, SCBL 3045
Early Life
William Henry Jackson was born in Keeseville, New York, the eldest of seven siblings. His talents in photography and sketching were put to good use in the Vermont studios where he worked in his youth. With the advent of the Civil War, Jackson enlisted in the Union Army in 1862. In his diary, he notes that he was soon ‘…ordered to simply ‘sketch or draw’…anything [he] pleased’ by Colonel Asa P. Blunt. In addition to drawing camp life, one of his most valuable contributions to the Union war effort was creating maps to aid fellow soldiers in battle.
Jackson was honorably discharged in 1863 and returned home to studio work, friends, and his sweetheart Caddie Eastman. This comfortable life ended with the sudden annulment of their engagement in 1866. Fleeing his old life in Vermont, Jackson set out westward as a bullwhacker on the Oregon Trail. In his 1929 autobiography, Jackson notes, "I had to get away from those memory-filled scenes; but I had no idea that this misfortune was to send me to such far-away paths of adventure.”
Many sketches from this period were done at the end of 1866, when he worked at the Birch Farm near Salt Lake City. During the first half of 1867, Jackson left for California by wagon train. He wandered by foot about 100 miles from Los Angeles northward and back before hiring on as a vaquero driving horses to Omaha. In Omaha, he founded the Jackson Brothers Photography studio with his brother Ed and friends Arundel Hull and Fred Johnson. In 1869 Jackson married Mollie Greer, who died during childbirth in 1872. In 1873 he married Emily Painter, with whom he had three children: Clarence, Louise, and Hallie.
Expeditions
Scotts Bluff National Monument, SCBL 769
While on a photographic assignment in 1869, Jackson had a chance meeting with geologist Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden, the leader of the United States Geological Survey of the Territories (“USGS”). This encounter changed the course of Jackson's life.
Impressed with his landscape photography, Hayden invited Jackson to join the USGS as a photographer for its 1870 expedition. Following the success of his first season of fieldwork, Jackson participated in another eight seasons with the USGS, earning him widespread renown, and contributing to the establishment of the National Park Service.
The Hayden expeditions combined the work of botanists, biologists, and mineralogists with that of photographers and artists. Cooks, guides, and hunters kept the team fed, and members camped in rugged conditions for months at a time. Pack mules and horses carried the scientific and photographic equipment. The voluminous collections of plant, paleontology, geology, and biology specimens were processed at USGS headquarters at the end of each field season. Many of these collections, generated prior to the establishment of the National Park Service, are housed at the Smithsonian Institution.
Expeditions William Henry Jackson Participated In
Wyoming, primarily along the Oregon Trail. Jackson was one of 20 survey members.
Yellowstone, with the survey now including over 35 members, including artist Thomas Moran. The area surveyed would become Yellowstone National Park the following year.
As the survey had expanded to 60, two teams were formed to maximize the areas covered. Jackson’s team surveyed the Grand Tetons for ten days before rejoining the main group led by Hayden in Yellowstone to photograph areas not previously covered, such as the Firehole Basin.
The survey broke into three scientific teams to cover the Colorado Rockies. Jackson led a fourth photographic team that documented the scientific teams’ activities. Jackson accomplished one of the crowning points of his career: his photography of the Mount of the Holy Cross.
The survey moved from central Colorado south to what is now the Four Corners region. Jackson documented Ancestral Puebloan sites, and produced the first known photographs of Mesa Verde.
As the survey moved throughout the Southwest, Jackson’s versatility qualified him to lead the team that covered northeast Arizona and southeast Utah. In addition to Ancestral Puebloan sites, Jackson also photographed and sketched daily life at the Hopi Pueblos.
While Hayden continued fieldwork, Jackson was among those selected to prepare an exhibition of the expedition’s work for the Philadelphia Centennial International Exposition.
While Hayden’s team surveyed Colorado, Jackson documented northern New Mexico. While all his photographs from that year were lost, his sketches and drawings remain.
Jackson rejoined Hayden’s survey party in Wyoming. Unfortunately, the team was beset by inclement weather and equipment failure. This was the last year of Hayden-led expeditions.
Later Years
NPS SCBL 2701
After parting from the USGS in 1878, Jackson set up a photography studio, the Jackson Photographic Company, in Denver. His prolific output included portraiture, as well as landscape photography from his travels by rail throughout North America. By the 1890s, economic downturns, advances in technology, and changing public tastes rendered his studio work unprofitable. Relocating to Detroit, Jackson found work with the Detroit Photographic Company (later the Detroit Publishing Company), where he remained for over a quarter century.
In 1893 Jackson became the official photographer for the World Transportation Commission, an initiative to promote American manufacturing and rail transportation worldwide. Led by publicist Joseph Gladding Pangborn, the group traveled across Egypt, Indonesia, Siberia, Australia, Korea, and beyond with the ostensible goal of researching modes of transportation. The Commission's lofty aspirations soon became a 17-month pleasure trip. While it was financially disastrous for the Commission and Jackson, his photographs provide a singular record of time and place.
Jackson’s retirement from professional photography in 1924 hardly slowed his artistic career. In the last two decades of his life, Jackson traded his camera for a brush, producing hundreds of paintings and drawings in watercolor, oil, pencil and ink. These included vignettes from his youth and idealized tableaus of American westward expansion, as well as commissions from the National Park Service. Jackson recreated several of his original Oregon Trail sketches for inclusion in his autobiographies, The Pioneer Photographer (1929, written with Howard R. Driggs) and Time Exposure (1940, written with Karl Brown). He also redeveloped negatives from his expeditions and created hand-tinted slides of his USGS photographs.
Jackson died due to complications from a fall on June 30, 1942, at age 99. Over 125 friends and associates attended his funeral service. Among their number was former National Park Service Director Horace Albright, who referred to Jackson as "the grand old man of Yellowstone."
Jackson's Photographic Process
NPS/SCBL 2129
Wet-plate photography was the only technique available for most of Jackson's USGS expeditions. The process involves preparation of a glass plate with several chemical solutions, exposing the plate for a few minutes, and then developing the resulting negative with more chemical fixatives. The larger the glass plate, the better the image quality.
Before working for the USGS, Jackson had photographed in the prairies outside Omaha using a "dark room on wheels." On expedition, toting his fragile glass plates, large quantities of water and chemicals, portable "dark room" tents, and bulky cameras across rugged terrain was far more difficult. Following his initial success with a modest 7 x 9 inch camera in 1870, an 8x10 inch camera was added in 1871. Jackson experimented with a larger 11 x 14 inch camera starting with his 1872 exploration of the Grand Tetons. In 1875 he brought along a large-format 20 x 24 inch camera, but it was too unwieldy for subsequent field seasons.
Work on the Centennial International Exposition exhibition introduced Jackson to dry-plate photography. This new technology allowed plates to be prepared ahead of time and developed long after exposure, streamlining the photographic process and reducing the amount of equipment needed. Unfortunately, Jackson's 1877 experiments with dry-plate photography in the arid Southwest were unsuccessful, and all his images from that year were unusable. He called it "…the biggest disaster of my career," and returned to using wet-plate photography on his final expedition with the USGS.
While advances in photographic processing ended Jackson's studio work, he used new technologies such as photolithographs and roll film cameras in his later years.
Courtesy of Bob Blair
A Special Thank You to Bob Blair
The National Park Service is indebted to Bob Blair for his extensive research and excellent photographs of the William Henry Jackson collection at Scotts Bluff National Monument. His invaluable contributions have made this exhibit possible.
Bob Blair has lived near Taos, New Mexico, for over 40 years, where he worked and retired from careers as an elementary school teacher and licensed building contractor. He continues work as a river raft guide, Nordic ski instructor, and on ski patrol. Recently, Blair joined an international medical team in the backcountry of Nepal. Other interests include organic gardening, nature photography and Western pre-history and history.
Blair became fascinated with Jackson's adventures as a pioneer and explorer, and his ability to capture the essence of the landscapes he photographed. He began researching Jackson's life and work in the 1970s, and has since visited many National Park Service and private collections to bring Jackson's incredible career to the public eye. Blair’s research has resulted in the updating of Jackson's autobiography, William Henry Jackson's "The Pioneer Photographer," that features images and documents not present in the original edition.