PBA Galleries

viii, 150 pp. With 30 mounted albumen photographs by A.J. Russell, including the frontispiece. (4to) 35x24 cm (12¾x9½"), rebound in three-quarter green leather & cloth, spine tooled in gilt, morocco lettering pieces, new endpapers, all edges gilt. First Edition.

Spectacular photographically illustrated tour along the newly complete transcontinental railroad, the text by the renowned American geologist Ferdinand Vandiveer Hayden noted for his pioneering surveying expeditions of the Rocky Mountains in the late 19th century. The photographs are by Andrew Joseph Russell (1829-1902), who was commissioned by the Union Pacific Railroad to photographically document the construction of the route from Omaha to Sacramento. Reduced from the original, much larger glass plate negatives, twelve of these photographs show scenes in Wyoming, sixteen in Utah, and two in the Sierra Nevada. Formerly in the Free Library of Newark, with blindstamps to title, half title, and the plate margins just touching the lithographic borders but not the albumen images.