Virtual Reality --------- 19th Century Style

During the 19th century viewing three-dimensional stereographs of famous locales was a widely popular pastime. The effect was produced by making two slightly different images of the same subject. This was accomplished using a special camera with two lenses placed about 2 inches apart in order to simulate the position of human eyes. When viewed through lenses of a hand-held stereopticon, the two images are interpreted by the human brain as a single image in three dimensions.  

This stereograph entitled, Section of Redwood Tree Big Tree Grove, Felton, Santa Cruz Co., Cal., shows two lady visitors standing beside the Giant. The image was taken by Carleton Watkins (1829-1916), one of the most famous landscape photographers of the West from the 1850s through the 1890s. 

Watkins is most remembered for his images of Yosemite which helped influence the U.S. Congress to pass legislation to protect the valley. Watkins, a native of New York, traveled to California during the Gold Rush. He helped deliver supplies to miners along with his fellow New Yorker, Collis Huntington, who later attained fame as one of the "Big Four" owners of the Central Pacific Railroad. 

By 1852 Watkins set out as a professional photographer. His work included documenting the mining estate of John Charles Frémont and his wife Jessie Benton Frémont in Mariposa County. During the financial crisis of 1875, Watkins lost his studio and negatives to creditors. He successfully restarted his photography business and over the next decade rebuilt his inventory by continuing to take landscape views along the West Coast. 

Working out of a studio office located at 427 Montgomery Street in San Francisco, Watkins took a series of stereographs he dubbed “Watkins’ New Series of Pacific Coast Views”. The stereograph showing the ladies at Big Trees Grove was number 5002 of this series which was completed by Watkins between 1879 and 1890. The date range appears accurate due to the ladies’ 1880s bustle style dresses. Another clue to the image’s date comes from the absence of a fence around the Giant. In 1892 a picket fence was erected around the grove’s monarch to protect it from souvenir hunters. 

Though the close-up, blurry view of the ladies shows that they did not stand still long enough for a perfect photograph, it does, unfortunately reveal the tourist graffiti once carved into the soft bark of the Giant. 

By the mid-1890s Watkins’ deteriorating eyesight and other health problems led to the end of his career. The photographer passed away on June 23, 1916 at the age of eighty-seven. Though the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake destroyed his studio and negatives, thankfully many of Watkins’ prints and stereographs survived. Further information about Carleton Watkins and his career can be found at www.carletonwatkins.org.

Stereograph from J. Paul Getty Open Content Program