Hayden hired and assembled a large team that included topographers, zoologists, botanists, meteorologists and artists, amongst others. Of note, the famous photographer William Henry Jackson, who was originally commissioned by the Union Pacific to capture and document the scenery along various railroad routes, was invited to join the government survey of the Rocky Mountains led by Hayden. He captured the first known photographs of Yellowstone. And Thomas Moran, whose landscape paintings from the expedition still hang in the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. An excerpt from Moran’s diary describes the awe and beauty that met the surveying party: “… of the route lay through a magnificent forest of pines & firs all growing straight as a ships mast, & growing but a few feet apart. passed over the debris of a great land slide. where the whole face of the Mountain had fallen down at some time, laying bare a great cliff some 500 feet high. The view of the lake, as we approached it, was very beautiful. It is a small pool formed by the widening of stream at this point, it is not more than half a mile in any direction. The Mountains surrounding it are about 11,000 feet high & about 3000 ft. above the level of the lake having snow still upon them. …” “Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone” painting, Thomas Moran The mountains and lakes, rivers and canyons, rock formations and geysers were unlike anything anyone had seen before, and it captured the imagination of our nation. UCLS Foresights 24
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