North Dome, Yosemite

Carleton E. Watkins captured the monumental landscape of Yosemite Valley using mammoth-plate photography, a process requiring cameras that produced prints up to 20 by 24 inches. His composition frames North Dome through a forest of tall pines, with a stream in the foreground anchoring the viewer in the valley floor. Watkins's photographs of the Sierra Nevada wilderness, made between 1861 and 1863, circulated widely in the East and influenced both artistic and political responses to Western expansion. These images helped establish Yosemite as a site of national significance, contributing to its eventual designation as the first state park in 1864.