author
William Henry Jackson
1843–1942
Best known for bringing the American West into view, this pioneering photographer captured Yellowstone, the Tetons, and other landscapes at a time when few Americans had ever seen them. His images helped shape how the country imagined the frontier and supported the movement to protect Yellowstone as a national park.
1 Audiobook
Descriptive Catalogue of Photographs of North American Indians
by William Henry Jackson
About the author
Born in Keesville, New York, on April 4, 1843, William Henry Jackson became one of the defining image-makers of the 19th-century American West. He served in the Civil War, then headed west in the 1860s, where his skills as a photographer and artist found a vast new subject in the plains, mountains, and growing rail routes.
Jackson is especially remembered for his photographs of Yellowstone and the Rocky Mountain region. Working with the Hayden geological survey in the early 1870s, he made some of the first widely seen photographs of Yellowstone, and those images helped convince eastern audiences and members of Congress that the area was worth preserving.
Over a long career, he also worked as a painter, explorer, and commercial photographer, documenting cities, railroads, and landscapes across the United States and beyond. He died in New York City on June 30, 1942, leaving behind a body of work that remains central to the visual history of the American West.