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Mushroom Rock on Alum Creek, Kansas, 211 miles west of Missouri River

Title
Mushroom Rock on Alum Creek, Kansas, 211 miles west of the Missouri River.
Artist
Alexander Gardner, 17 Oct 1821 - 10 Dec 1882
Date
1867
Type
Photograph
Medium
Albumen silver print
Dimensions
Image: 30.2 × 45.1cm (11 7/8 × 17 3/4")
Topic
Portrait
Credit Line
Owner: National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution

This record is part of the Catalog of American Portraits, a research archive of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Permission to reproduce images (if available) must be obtained from the portrait owner. Please note that if an owner is listed above, this information may not be current.

Restrictions & Rights
Usage conditions apply
Object number
P10132
Exhibition Label
In 1867, the Kansas Pacific Railroad commissioned Alexander Gardner to photograph its proposed transcontinental route along the thirty-fifth and thirty-second parallels. Setting out from St. Louis with the railroad’s surveyors, he made hundreds of views in Kansas; the Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona Territories; and California. The railroad supplemented its survey report with Gardner’s photographs in a bid to secure government bonds and land grants from Congress. In this context, a view like Mushroom Rock served as more than a simple record of a fascinating feature of the central Kansas landscape; the photograph was also evidence of the abundant sandstone available to the settlers who would build towns around the proposed route. Moreover, the natural resources surrounding the line would allow the Kansas Pacific to make good use of the “waste and barrenness” characterizing the western landscape.
Data Source
Catalog of American Portraits