1879, surveyor and educator George Davidson began his ambitious endeavor of creating a geodetic survey of the West. Nowhere was it more difficult to geodetically survey than across the vast, mountain state of California and its wildly varying terrain.

Davidson employed the photographic services of Carleton Watkins not only to document his work but to aid in it as well. Watkins hauled around 1,000 pounds of equipment from the Southern Pacific summit station up to Mt. Lola, the highest point in the Sierras north of Donner Pass. He then traveled southward to Round Top, an isolated mountain southwest of Lake Tahoe. When he was done, he had completed 41 mammoth-plate views of the area. The detailed precision of Watkins' images were integral to Davidson's work. Davidson's resulting geodetic measurements, completed between 1879-1881, are within a third of an inch of those taken today.

The present photograph, which at one time was in Davidson’s personal collection, was likely taken around this time. Watkins later published a cabinet card view of the same image, and the men would continue to work together until the early 1890s.