8 1/8 x 12 3/8 in. albumen photograph on 13 x 17 7/8 in. cardstock mount. Ink inscription to verso reads, "New Tacoma Gen. View."

Born in Oneonta, NY, Carleton Emmons Watkins moved to California in 1851 apprenticing in the photography studio of Robert H. Vance. First visiting Yosemite in 1861, Watkins' photographs of the area gained international acclaim. He operated the Yosemite Gallery throughout San Francisco until the mid-1870s when interest waned and he was forced to sell his gallery and the first series of Yosemite negatives in 1875. Watkins continued his photographic career in the American West, producing some of the earliest photographs of Southern California and the Pacific Northwest, before losing much of his work in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.