The Colfax Party in the Yosemite (stereoview on glass - signed by Watkins)
1865
In August, 1865 Speaker of the House Schuyler Coxfax led the first group of eastern dignitaries to visit Yosemite Valley. The group traveled to California over the recently established Overland Mail Route "simply to see the country and to study its resources."1 They camped in the valley opposite Yosemite Falls where Carleton Watkins took this photograph. Many of Watkins early stereoviews were produced as transparencies on glass as well as the more common paper prints.
- Samuel Bowles - publisher of the Springfield Republican (standing, top right)
- Schuyler Colfax - Indiana congressman and Speaker of the House (middle row, third from right)
- Fredrick Law Olmsted - head of the first Yosemite Board of Commissioners and co-designer of New York's Central Park (middle row, fifth from right)
- William Bross - lieutenant governor of Illinois and senior editor of the Chicago Tribune (middle row, third from left)
- Mary Perkins Olmsted - wife of Fredrick Law Olmsted (front row, third from right)
- Albert Richardson - distinguished civil war correspondent for the New York Tribune (front row, at right)
1Johnson, Hank, The Yosemite Grant, 1864-1906 : a pictorial history (Yosemite National Park, CA: Yosemite Association, 1995) Pp. 64-67
