Carleton Watkins : making the West American /
Tyler Green.
- Oakland, California : University of California Press, (c)2018.
- 1 online resource
Includes bibliographies and index.
Sunrise in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains -- Arriving in California -- Creating western culture at Black Point -- Secession or union? -- To Yosemite in wartime -- Sharing Yosemite -- Exhibiting Yosemite in wartime -- Expanding the western landscape -- The birth of the nature park idea -- Assisting American science -- To Oregon (for industry) -- Volcanic landscapes -- Basking in achievement, building a business -- Celebrating Gilded Age wealth -- Taking Shasta, discovering glaciers -- The boom years -- San Francisco's borrasca -- The comeback -- Creating semi-tropical California -- Showing California its history -- Enter William H. Lawrence -- Re-building a business -- Mapping from the mountaintops -- Becoming agricultural -- Traveling the west (again) -- The new industrial agriculture near Bakersfield, California -- The last great picture -- The long, slow end.
"Carleton Watkins was the greatest American photographer of the nineteenth century and the most influential artist of his era. Making the West American examines Carleton Watkins's life and his role in making the West a part of a distant nation from the Civil War period until the end of the nineteenth century. Watkins's work gave America Yosemite and provided the impetus for the national park idea, introduced Eastern scientists to the West, informed American business about investment in the West, insisted that the West's history had a place in America's story, and helped enable the industrial-scale agriculture that has come to dominate the West"--Provided by publisher.