Alexander Gardner, 17 Oct 1821 - 10 Dec 1882 Search this
Medium:
Albumen silver print
Dimensions:
Image: 30.2 × 45.1cm (11 7/8 × 17 3/4")
Type:
Photograph
Date:
1867
Exhibition Label:
In 1867, the Kansas Pacific Railroad commissioned Alexander Gardner to photograph its proposed transcontinental route along the thirty-fifth and thirty-second parallels. Setting out from St. Louis with the railroad’s surveyors, he made hundreds of views in Kansas; the Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona Territories; and California. The railroad supplemented its survey report with Gardner’s photographs in a bid to secure government bonds and land grants from Congress. In this context, a view like Mushroom Rock served as more than a simple record of a fascinating feature of the central Kansas landscape; the photograph was also evidence of the abundant sandstone available to the settlers who would build towns around the proposed route. Moreover, the natural resources surrounding the line would allow the Kansas Pacific to make good use of the “waste and barrenness” characterizing the western landscape.