American Historical Ephemera & Photography

Quarto album (11 x 13 1/2 in.) 122 photographs, possibly printing-out paper prints, most approx. 5 3/4 x 7 3/4 in., mounted recto on 10 x 13 1/2 in. album pages (most prints toned and faded, some with cracks to surface and deterioration; album pages brittle with significant chipping and loss to corners and edges, many fully detached from spine). Leather covers (significant surface wear and loss, lacking spine). Most numbered in the negative, and approx. 13 with captions written in the negative. The captions indicate that the images in the album document the "Railway Survey, Colorado River, 1889," led by civil and mining engineer Robert Brewster Stanton (1846-1922).

As chief engineer of the Denver, Colorado Canyon and Pacific Railroad Company, Stanton headed up a surveying expedition from 1889-1890 to determine the plausibility of constructing a railroad through the Grand Canyon. He meticulously recorded the daily progress of the exploration survey through his writings and photography, as evidenced in the album offered here, which features numerous views documenting the rugged landscapes. The survey is considered one of the fullest primary records ever made of the Colorado River from Grand Junction, CO, to the Gulf of California. Both Miami University (Oxford, OH) and the New York Public Library (New York, NY) have materials related to Stanton and this expedition in their holdings. (Information obtained from Miami University's Walter Havighurst Special Collections, University Archives & Preservation website.)

Titled scenes include: Up the River. -- Camp 33, Marble Canon. -- Marble Canon where Pres. F.M. Brown was drowned. July 10, 1889. -- Camp 35 at Rapid 118 up. -- Camp 36 Rapid 12 up. -- Below Big Rock, Looking Up. -- Rapid 123, in Marble Canon. Up. -- Side Canon from Marble Pier. -- Down from Lone Cedar Rapid. -- Marble Pier. -- From Vasey's Paradise down.

The album contains an image of Robert Stanton standing in front of Lee's Ferry, a site on the Colorado River, in Coconino County, Arizona, along with a number of other photos of unidentified men, presumably participants in the surveying expedition, posed at the same location. Additional views show the men taking a break or setting up camp.