Mouth of Patterson's Creek, Main Line, B & O Railroad

In the decades following the Civil War, William Henry Jackson was one of the primary photographic chroniclers of America’s westward expansion. After operating a photography studio in Omaha, Nebraska, he documented the landscape of the Rocky Mountains, including Yellowstone, as an official photographer for Francis V. Hayden’s Geological and Geographic Survey of the Territories. In the late summer of 1892, the Baltimore & Ohio (B & O) Railroad commissioned Jackson to photograph a series of scenic views along the route. Over one hundred images, made with a mammoth camera (the 18 x 22–inch print is the same size as the glass plate negative), were displayed in the B & O exhibit at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago the following year. In this scene of Patterson’s Creek in West Virginia, Jackson has emphasized the pristine scenery to which modern transportation would allow access.