Seeing Yellowstone in 1871 : earliest descriptions & images from the field / edited and with an introduction by Marlene Deahl Merrill ; with text by Albert Peale and illustrations by Thomas Moran, William Henry Jackson, and Henry Wood Elliott.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Peale, A. C. (Albert Charles), 1849-1913.

Contributor:

Merrill, Marlene.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Photography.

Drawing.

Watercolor painting.

Geological surveys.

Natural history.

Yellowstone National Park--Description and travel.

Yellowstone National Park.

Peale, A. C. (Albert Charles), 1849-1913--Travel--Yellowstone National Park.

Peale, A. C.

Peale, A. C. (Albert Charles), 1849-1913.

Travel.

Natural history--Yellowstone National Park.

Geological surveys--Yellowstone National Park.

Yellowstone National Park--History--20th century--Pictorial works.

Yellowstone National Park--In art.

Watercolor painting--Yellowstone National Park.

Drawing--Yellowstone National Park.

Photography--Yellowstone National Park.

Genre:

Illustrated works.

Art.

Physical Description:

xiv, 85 pages : illustrations (some color), map ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, [2005]

Summary:

In 1871 the young mineralogist Albert Peale set out with the vaunted Hayden Expedition to map and explore the Yellowstone Basin. Ferdinand Hayden asked Peale, his former student, to write a series of letters to the Philadelphia Press about the survey's work. Just as these letters, the first impressions of Yellowstone sent back from the field, introduced nineteenth-century readers to some of the most breathtaking wonders of the American West, they allow readers today to rediscover one of the nation's most beloved and visited natural areas as it was just five months before it became the world's first national park.

Written by a scientist for the general reader, Peale's letters convey the grandeur of Yellowstone with great clarity and immediacy, even as they offer apt, detailed descriptions of the basin's geologic features, from the geysers-Giant, Grotto, and Mud, among others-to the creeks and rivers, craters and springs. Illustrating these descriptions are the earliest artistic images of Yellowstone, also done during the expedition-watercolor field sketches by Thomas Moran, photographs by William Henry Jackson, and the now little-known works of the party's official artist, Henry Wood Elliott. Ranging from dramatic panoramic landscapes to lighthearted sketches of the expedition's more personal moments, these images combine with Peale's written impressions to give readers a true and rare sense of what it was like for these men to marvel at Yellowstone for the first time.

Notes:

Text taken from letters written by Albert Peale, a mineralogist with the Hayden Survey to Yellowstone, to his hometown newspaper, the Philadelphia Press.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [79]-84).

ISBN:

0803287879

OCLC:

57754331

Publisher Number:

9780803287877