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Photography in emerging western U. S. territories
This transition from a 'wild' western frontier into organized segments of
a federal union is documented in photographs. Private citizens and
Government officials took recently-developed cameras on their western
adventures recording nature's curious sights and the marks they as
men and women made on the landscape. It's a wonder so many photographs
survived the hardships of the western experience, for early negatives
were large glass plates.
These photographs have found their way into the National Archives
as record materials of Federal bureaus and offices--Bureaus of Land
Management, Indian Affairs, Public Roads, Weather, Agricultural Economics,
and Reclamation; Fish and Wildlife Service, Geological Survey, boundary
and claims commissions, Corps of Engineers, Forest Service, and
Signal Corps.