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Content in this frame is from Online Archive of California website

Image courtesy of: Online Archive of California   (Accession Number 1905.17175:81)
Photographers number:Unnumbered
Title:Sutter's Mill, South Fork, American River, Coloma, El Dorado County
Inscription:Recto mount on pasted paper label, centered below image: Sutter’s Mill, South Fork American River, Coloma/Jan. 19, 1848/Watkins’ New Series, San Francico
Date Photographed: 1875-1883
Catalog:Carleton Watkins: The Complete Mammoth Photographs, cat. no. 1
Notes:CMP notes: Silver copy print of a dagguereotype. Even in Watkins's time, this picture would have been considered a historical rarity. This mammoth plate is a copy of a photographone that may have been a daguerreotypeit shows the location where gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill in California [Footnote 1], along with an unidentified figure prominently featured in the foregroundpossibly James W. Marshall or another member of the discovery party. The original source image would have been created approximately thirty years before Watkins made his mammoth-plate copy of it. The date assigned to it by Watkins (as January 19, 1848) reflects the popular understanding of the date of the gold discovery rather than the date the source picture was made [Footnote 2]. Based on costume and photographic style the source photograph appears to have been made in the early 1850s, and the copy is believed to have been made between 1875 and 1883.
At least one large question is

Photographer:Carleton E Watkins   (Nov 11, 1829 — Jun 23, 1916;  Active approx. 1853 — 1896)
Publisher:Carleton Watkins
Format:Mammoth Plate
Medium:Silver
Image Size:14 1⁄2  x  19 1⁄2  in.  (36.8 x 49.5 cm)  —  Horizontal, Rectangle
Mount Size:22  x  28   in.  (55.9 x 71.1 cm)
Provenance to 1900:Phoebe A. Hearst  (source: 1909/BL notes)

View this image in gallery:Watkins Earliest Photographs
Link to image source:https://oac.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/tf309nb305/?brand=oac4
CarletonWatkins.org Image ID:1005543
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