Three of the photographs in the collection are by John K. Hillers. One of the photographs, titled “the Teapot,” is located at Green River, Ashley’s Creek, Utah and the other two photos, “the Tower,” and “the Spire,” were both photographed at Vermillion Creek in Colorado. The other two images (“the Gates of Lodore” and “Reflected Cliff”) are by E.O. Beaman. Seen in the “Reflected Cliff' image (also sometimes titled as "The Heart of Lodore") is the explorer Frederick Dellenbaugh, just 17-year old when the picture was taken.

The J.W. Powell Surveys were government-funded geological surveys to define the landscape of the great American West led by Major John Wesley Powell. The resolution of Westward Expansion gave way to the era of exploration and on March 3rd, 1870, the United States Government formed the United States Geological Survey (USGS) to begin the daunting task of inspecting the newly acquired land for potential development. John Wesley Powell, a geologist and veteran, served as the second director of the United States Geological Survey from 1881 to 1894. Before his leadership, he was assigned an expedition in 1869 that took him through the Green River (Wyoming), the Colorado River, and the Grand Canyon. His group, consisting of 9 men, made the first government-organized excursion through the Grand Canyon. During this three month trip, the team christened Glen Canyon while viewing it from the Colorado River. In 1870, Powell was once again summoned to survey the area, now under the official establishment of the USGS, which established more detailed and precise maps and photographs (from photographers Elias Olcott Beaman, James Fennemore, and John K. Hillers). On this trip, his team of experts collected geological and botanical samples; and recorded barometric and thermal data to calculate cardinal directions.

Born in Germany in 1843, John Karl Hillers immigrated to the United States in 1852. He worked various jobs and served in the Civil War until he was hired by John Wesley Powell as an oarsman, and later promoted in 1872 as chief photographer, on the various Powell Surveys of the Grand Canyon. In 1879, he continued working for the government and began photographing New Mexico and Arizona for a survey by the Bureau of American Ethnology. During this time, Hillers took on a more ethnographic focus, sympathetically capturing the lives of the Native Americans of the surveyed lands. On an expedition led by James Stevenson, Hillers photographed the Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico. Hillers was a prolific photographer, with over 20,000 negatives to his name and success in both the scientific and artistic genres of photography. A. H. Thompson, a fellow teammate on the Powell survey, named a summit in the Henry Mountain Range in honor of Hillers.

Elias Olcott Beaman Jr. was born on September 13, 1837 in Franklin County, New York. He briefly worked as a ship pilot on the Great Lakes before getting recognition for his landscape photography in Hudson and the Adirondack Mountains in New York and his commissioned work for the photography supplier, E. & H.T. Anthony. Beaman was hired by John Wesley Powell as the principal photographer for the second survey of the Colorado River in 1871 and they set off in May with over a ton of photographic equipment. Beamon produced 350 wet plate photographs along the journey, the first images ever taken of locations such as the Flaming Gorge Reservoir and various canyons, as well as the Native Americans of Arizona. Due to conflicts of personality, Beaman was removed from Powell’s survey in August of 1872 and replaced with Jeames Fennemore and later, John Hillers. The rift between Powell and Beaman grew when the rights of the images came into question. Beaman’s photographs and accounts from his experiences were published before Powell could conclude the survey and his career as an explorer took off. It is believed that many of the photographs credited to Hillers from the second Colorado expedition were actually taken by Beaman who prematurely died at only 39 years old from meningitis on October 15, 1876 in Camden, New Jersey. Before his death, Beaman had had a popular lecture in which he projected lantern slides of the photographs he took of Yellowstone National Park and had been invited to show at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876. His work is held today in the collections at Cambridge, Yale, Harvard, the Library of Congress, the George Eastman Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art.