William Henry Jackson

Born 1843 Keesville, NY (USA)

Died 1942

Jackson, Civil War veteran and a writer, photographer and painter, is considered by many to have been the most important photographer of the American West. Jackson lived and worked in Omaha from 1867 to 1879. While working out of Omaha, he photographed Pawnee and Omaha tribe members from the area, and new settlements and landscapes along the Union Pacific as far as Promontory Point, Utah. In 1870 Ferdinand Hayden recruited Jackson to accompany his Western survey, which included much of the Rocky Mountains, Yellowstone, and areas as far south as Arizona and New Mexico and lasted 11 years. Thomas Moran was the expedition's artist. The expedition photographs made Jackson's reputation.

Scottsbluff National Monument houses the largest collection anywhere of Jackson's paintings, made late in life, but reflecting real events that he saw along the Oregon Trail in its heyday. Jackson had first crossed Nebraska in 1866 working as a bullwhacker for a freighting company. His photographic survey of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago The White City (as it was) is also very famous. He also photographed the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition (World's Fair) held in Omaha in 1898.

Places Lived

Omaha, NE

Author Of

Visual Work

Keywords

Photographer; writer; Old West

Occupation

Photographer

Bibliography

The White City (as it was). 1894.
Time Exposure: The Autobiography of William Henry Jackson.. 1940.
Descriptive Catalogue of the Photographs of the United States Geological Survey of the Territories: For the Years 1869 to 1875, Inclusive.
Picture Maker of the Old West, William H. Jackson. 1947.

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