The Yosemite Valley from the Mariposa Trail

Card-mounted stereoscopic scenes composed of paired albumen silver prints were more common during the 1860s and 1870s than the far costlier large-format views shown nearby. Watkins’s 1864 diary recounts that he sold stereo views on paper mounts for one dollar and that mammothplate prints were five dollars. Other San Francisco photographers as well as large East Coast wholesalers of photographs such E. and H. T. Anthony published and sold views of Yosemite for as little as a dollar a dozen. Made from a precipitous perspective at about six thousand feet, this thrilling view makes use of the stereo effect (seeming three-dimensionality) by employing distinctive foreground, middle-ground, and background elements. Visible are Bridalveil Fall at middle right, El Capitan at left, and Half Dome in the distance. The Yosemite Valley floor is about three thousand feet below. Watkins copyrighted the photograph in 1867 and released it as no. 1,137 in his popular "Watkins’ Pacific Coast" series. The artist’s San Francisco address and the orange card mount indicate that he printed and sold the stereograph between 1871 and 1875.