Sights Once Seen: Daguerreotyping Frmont's Last Expedition Through the Rockies

About this book

Little is known about the fifth and last western expedition of the celebrated explorer John Charles Frmont. The great effort to survey a transcontinental railway route across the 38th parallel ended short of success in the snows of Utah in 1854 but involved a meticulous photographic documentation-in daguerreotypes-of the route from the Mississippi westward. It was believed that a central railroad across the country would favor abolitionists in the great debate then raging in the country over slavery. Solomon Nunes Carvalho was hired by Frmont to photograph the expedition-the first time a western expeditionary survey had been systematically documented in photographs. Tragically the daguerreotypes were destroyed by fire and Frmonts fifth expedition was lost to history. Author and daguerreotypist Robert Shlaer remarkably has reconstructed the expedition in 120 original daguerreotypes. Using Frmonts maps expedition documents and Carvalhos diary accounts Shlaer recreates the lost expedition across Americas most breathtaking landscape using photographys first and most venerable method of daguerreotypy.