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Mormon Turnpike Bridge, Mouth of Weber Canon. Plate 42.
[Utah, 1869]. Albumen print, 8.9” x 11.6”, on original paperboard mount with printed title. Plate 42 of Andrew Russell’s The Great West Illustrated in a Series of Photographic Views. CONDITION: Very good, strong tonality, a few small indentations at verso creating bumps in image, one small stain in upper portion of image; two small spots of browning at upper margin, a few tiny specs at margins. An important photo of the Mormon Turnpike Bridge and Weber Canyon in Utah, just prior to the laying of Union Pacific Railroad tracks through the canyon. Two men stand between a log cabin and the wooden bridge crossing the Weber River. Forty miles long and named after the fur trapper John H. Weber, Weber Canyon is located just east of Ogden, Utah. The Weber River flows west through the canyon toward Great Salt Lake. The first known California-bound overland travelers to pass through Weber Canyon and cross the Weber River were the Harlan-Young, Lienhard, and Donner-Reed parties of 1846. It was at this crossing that Lansford Hastings left a note telling the Donner-Reed Party not to go through Weber Canyon. As a result of the note, the Donner-Reed Co. blazed the trail from Henefer Valley to Salt Lake Valley, which the Mormons followed in 1847 and for the next twenty-two years. The Mormon Pioneer Company of 1847 forded the river here on three different days: Orson Pratt’s Advance Party on 15 July; the Main Group on 19 July; and Brigham Young’s small group of fifteen wagons on 20 July. Young’s small group, which stayed with him because of his illness, camped a quarter of a mile upstream from the crossing. Both sides of the crossing were used as campsites by pioneer companies, and some who died were buried there. Fording the Weber River was dangerous; as wagons tried to cross the river (which was two to four feet deep and 100 feet wide), many mishaps took place. A ferry or raft, run by the Mormons, was being used 825 feet above this crossing as early as 1850, and the first road through Weber Canyon was completed in 1855 by a group led by Thomas J. Thurston. A footbridge was built at the Weber Crossing in 1857 by members of the Utah Militia, and by 1859 a bridge was built that could handle stage coaches, called by Horace Greeley “the Shaky Pole Bridge.” The bridge pictured here was apparently a sturdier replacement for the one described by Greeley. Andrew Russell is known to have been called out west to document the completion of new bridges and record their testing (e.g., Devil’s Gate Bridge crossing the Weber River). The Pacific Railroad acts of 1862 and 1864 granted land and government bonds to the Central Pacific (CP) and Union Pacific (UP) railroads on the basis of how many miles of track they laid, setting the stage for a seven-year race between the two railroads. Whichever line neared Salt Lake City first promised to capture Mormon traffic on its route. In 1868, Brigham Young contracted with UP to build part of the transcontinental railroad though Weber Canyon and Echo Canyon. Young maintained contact with the executives of the UP during construction, trying in vain to get them to build a direct line to Salt Lake City. Completion of the UP in May of 1869—the nation’s first transcontinental railroad—stimulated growth in Weber County. The period of rapid construction of the UP made for some barely adequate bridges, some of them constituting temporary crossings. Born in New Hampshire, Andrew J. Russell (1830–1902) became a photographer during the Civil War, and in 1863 was appointed government photographer. To encourage settlement and investment in the West after the war, the vice president of the Union Pacific Railroad Thomas Durant commissioned Russell to document the construction of the transcontinental railroad. During 1868 Russell lived in construction camps and sent his negatives east for printing. He returned to New York later that year and in 1869 published The Great West Illustrated (New York: The Union Pacific Railroad Co.). On his second trip out west, he photographed Omaha and a number of growing Nebraska towns on his way to the joining of the rails at Promontory, Utah in 1869. Thousands of readers of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated viewed his images of the ceremony, which were reproduced as wood-engravings, including his iconic shot, “Joining of the Rails.” Following this event, Russell traveled to California and then returned to New York in late 1869, where he established the Decoration and Designing Co. and worked as a photojournalist for Frank Leslie. He died in Brooklyn in 1902. Illuminating important themes in U.S. history, Russell’s work brought the railroad and the West to a mass audience—capturing the grand scale of western lands, railroad construction, frontier boomtowns, and the effects of the railroads on Native Americans. A lovely image by a renowned western photgrapher of this historic crossing on the Weber River. REFERENCES: Russell, Andrew J. The Great West Illustrated in a Series of Photographic Views Across the Continent Taken Along the Line of the Union Pacific Railroad, West from Omaha, Nebraska (New York: The Union Pacific Railroad Co., 1869); Andrew J. Russell at Collections of the Museum of California online; “Russell, Andrew J. (1829–1902),” Wishart, David J., ed. Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, at University of Nebraska-Lincoln online; “Latter-day Saints on the Transcontinental Railroad” at Utah State University online; The Race to Utah at PBS online; “Weber River Crossing and Campsite” at Jacob Barlow online.
Item #8075
Price: $2,750.00
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