Focusing on the Columbia Gorge: Photography, Geology, and the Pioneer West

Abstract

Terry S. Toedtemeier Focusng on the Columbia Gojrge Photography, Geology, andthe Pioneer West LEWIS AND CLARK WERE SUCH CAREFUL OBSERVERS of the land scape that they set a "methodological precedent" for future surveys and explorations of theAmerican West, as JimE. O'Conner ex f plains in this issue. The rigorous observations in their journal en trieswere, in essence, proto-photographic, presaging the role photography would play indocumenting the West during theU.S. Geologic Surveys over a half century later. Since the 1860s, photographers have continually taken images of the landscapes from just above Celilo Falls west to Crown Point, and scores of images exist that qualify as de facto illustrations forLewis and Clark's journals during their travels through the gorge.Many of them docu ment features that Lewis and Clark would have seen but that are submerged today, and many depict significant geologic features. In theAmerican West, geology and photography have been intimately linked ever since substantial placer gold deposits were discovered inColoma, California, in January 1848.Although themedium of photography was only a decade old in 1849, the California Gold Rush was the firstmajor event inAmerican history to be recorded in photographs. The geologists who established the California Geological Survey in i860 were eager to obtain photographs to support theirfield studies and findings; and in 1867,Congress approved a series of geologic explorations of the West that included funds forphotographic documentation. Not coincidentally, on July12ofthat same year the now-legendary Carleton Watkins arrived in Portland, Oregon, to photograph along the Willamette River from Oregon City to Portland and along the Columbia from Vancouver, Washington, to Celilo east of The Dalles. Much like Lewis and Clark,Watkins's vision was informed by a deep appreciation and awareness of geologic form. Prior to his arrival inOregon, Watkins had established close tieswith contacts at the California Geological Survey. On numerous occasions, he produced photographs of the Yosemite Valley at the request of survey director Josiah Dwight Whitney and his assistant, William Henry Brewer. These geologists, historian Peter Palmquist has noted, "were soon tobecome 422 OHQ vol. 105, no. 3 ? 2004 Oregon Historical Society Unless otherwisenoted,all photographs courtesyofTerryToedtemeier Tumwater, Columbia River, O.R. & N., c. 1878 Albert H. Wulzen (American, b. Germany, 1844-1917) albumen print Watkins' greatest champions."1 Whitney's interest in the geology of the Northwest was a driving force in the California Geological Society's sup port of Watkins's 1867 travels along theColumbia River. Although Whitney did not accompany Watkins on the journey, he had every confidence in the photographer's ability to recognize significant geologic subjects and create the best possible images of their features. From Rooster Rock east to Celilo Falls,Watkins produced thirty-sixmammoth plate negatives in approximately three months. Measuring eighteen by twenty-two inches, the collodion wet-plate glass negatives hemade required a correspondingly large camera. Further, the negatives had to be prepared and, following their lengthy exposure, processed in the field. After his return to San Francisco in lateNovember 1867, therewere so few sunlit days suitable for contact print ing the negatives that ittook until mid-April the following year to produce a full set of prints for exhibition. Over the past several decades, Watkins's 1867 photographs of the Co lumbia River Gorge have gone from near-total obscurity to being hailed as icons of the history of photography. In 2002, theU.S. Postal Service chose to reproduce one ofWatkins's gorge images in a series of twentyMasters of American Photography commemorative stamps. Had the stamps been horizontally rather than vertically formatted, my vote would have been for one of themost remarkable geologic landscape photographs ever made: Toedtemeier, Focusing on theColumbia Gorge 423 Passage ofThe Dalles. Although we know this photograph was made in 1867, the image allows our imagination to transcend time and space. Had the technology been available, itcould have been made in the time of Lewis and Clark. In choice of camera placement and framing,Watkins depicted with a kind of glacial purity only rock,water, and sky ? the elemental states of solid, liquid, and vapor. Like a NASA photograph of theMartian surface, the image is so barrenly planetary as to suggest an origin long lost in the...