Grizzly Giant Sequoia Tree, Yosemite, 1860s
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Science History Images / Alamy Stock PhotoImage ID:
HRP192File size:
39.2 MB (2.2 MB Compressed download)Releases:
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3259 x 4200 px | 27.6 x 35.6 cm | 10.9 x 14 inches | 300dpiPhotographer:
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This image could have imperfections as it’s either historical or reportage.
Entitled: "Section of the Grizzly Giant with Galen Clark, Mariposa Grove, Yosemite" photographed by Carleton E. Watkins, circa 1865-66. Watkins made his name with views of the extraordinarily beautiful Yosemite Valley, which he photographed repeatedly over a 20 year period, beginning in 1861. By that time, he was a virtuoso practitioner of the difficult wet-collodion process using "mammoth" glass plates, which rendered the vastness of the landscape and its infinite details with unsurpassed scope and clarity. Watkins, whose livelihood was dependent on sales of his California views to tourists, no doubt made this image with a mind to impressing Easterners and propagating the notion that the West was America's own amazing Garden of Eden. To illustrate its awesome scale, Watkins posed the explorer Galen Clark at the base of this massive 300 year old tree known as the Grizzly Giant. Along with the Yosemite Valley, the Big Trees in the Mariposa Grove were on every early tourist's route through the region. Following his bankruptcy in 1876, Watkins lost his gallery and negatives to his competitor Isaiah West Taber. Without crediting him, Taber continued printing the most famous of Watkins's early Yosemite images, including this one. The tree has been measured many times, most recently in 1990 by Wendell Flint. It has a volume of 34, 005 cubic feet, making it the 25th largest giant sequoia living today. Height above base measures 209 feet, circumference at ground measures 96.5 feet.