17 x 21 inches; mount larger
Jackson's title and credit in the negative.
A dramatic, uncommon mammoth plate photograph by William Henry Jackson, showing the Georgetown Loop Railroad in Colorado. Completed in 1884, the Loop quickly became one of the state’s first visitor...
A dramatic, uncommon mammoth plate photograph by William Henry Jackson, showing the Georgetown Loop Railroad in Colorado. Completed in 1884, the Loop quickly became one of the state’s first visitor attractions. In her book “Railroad vision: Photography, Travel and Perception, author Anne M. Lyden writes, “the Georgetown Loop afforded the [train] engines a means of scaling the steep canyon by gaining 638 feet of elevation within a space of two miles. Without the curving series of double-horseshoes to create a loop the locomotives would have had the impossible task of climbing three hundred feet to the mile.”
Interestingly, Jackson has posed two figures at the front of the train, one beside it and the other sitting causally on top of the cowcatcher, adding a sense of both scale and humanity to the scene.