About

After traveling extensively and attempting to make a living by making photographs, William Henry Jackson combined his artistic skill in the fledgling art of photography with his spirit for adventure when he began photographing for the U. S. Geological Survey in 1870. The Survey was set up in 1867 under the auspices of the Land Office of the Department of the Interior in Washington. Designed to create an official record of the vast unknown territory of the West, the Survey consisted of about twenty men including topographers, a meteorologist, an ethnologist, and artists. For Jackson, the …