Wild Beauty:
Photographs of the Columbia River Gorge 1867–1957

$75
Click image to enlarge

The first volume in the Northwest Photography Series, Wild Beauty illuminates the rich photographic heritage of the Columbia River Gorge. The book features 134 images by three dozen photographers including Carleton Watkins, Benjamin Gifford, Fred Kiser, Lily White, Sarah Ladd, Alfred Monner, and Ray Atkeson. Toedtemeier and Laursen provide the fascinating historical context for these stunning photographs in a five-part essay. A timeless document of this beloved landscape!

360 pages; 134 full-color photographs; 12" x 12.5"

Wild Beauty:
Photographs of the Columbia River Gorge 1867–1957
Limited Edition with slipcase and archival print

$400
Click to enlarge image

100 Limited Edition copies of Wild Beauty have been signed, numbered, and enclosed in a hand-crafted, foil-stamped slipcase. Included in each book is a numbered, limited edition 8" x 10" archival quality inkjet print of Carleton Watkins' 1867 photograph Cape Horn, Columbia River.

Cape Horn, Columbia River
Carleton E. Watkins, 1867

Archival prints from $100.00
Click image to enlarge

Rising dramatically above the river on the north side, not far past Rooster Rock, is the imposing, half-mile-long cliff face of Cape Horn. It appears that Watkins made this photograph from the deck of the steamer. In 2002 this classic image was selected for reproduction as one of the set of twenty “Masters of American Photography” stamps issued by the U.S. Postal Service.

The photographs in Wild Beauty were meticulously restored and carefully prepared for print reproduction in order to capture the detail and tonal range of the original images. These beautiful archival inkjet prints are made to order from the restored digital files. Our standard sizes denote the paper size; a small border is left around the image to make framing easier. Custom sizes are easily produced, though, and priced by the square inch; if you would like to inquire about a custom size, please contact us.

Multnomah Falls, Cascades, Columbia River
Carleton E. Watkins, 1867

Archival prints from $100.00
Click image to enlarge

Oregon’s Multnomah Falls, the second-tallest year-round waterfall in the United States, is the most famous – and most photographed – scenic feature in the Columbia Gorge. It would not have been easily accessible in 1867, due to the dense forest that separated the falls from the river’s shore. Watkins took pains to find a point from which both the upper and lower falls could be seen in relation to each other. This is the first significant image made of this iconic place.

The photographs in Wild Beauty were meticulously restored and carefully prepared for print reproduction in order to capture the detail and tonal range of the original images. These beautiful archival inkjet prints are made to order from the restored digital files. Our standard sizes denote the paper size; a small border is left around the image to make framing easier. Custom sizes are easily produced, though, and priced by the square inch; if you would like to inquire about a custom size, please contact us.

Islands in the Columbia, Upper Cascades
Carleton E. Watkins, 1867

Archival prints from $100.00
Click image to enlarge

In the 1860s the area above the Cascades was one of the most developed sites in the Gorge. Though this image shows little of the development that had taken place, it provides an excellent view of the deceptively placid reach of river that lay immediately above the unnavigable rush of water in the rapids, a hint of which appears at the right-hand edge of the photograph.

The photographs in Wild Beauty were meticulously restored and carefully prepared for print reproduction in order to capture the detail and tonal range of the original images. These beautiful archival inkjet prints are made to order from the restored digital files. Our standard sizes denote the paper size; a small border is left around the image to make framing easier. Custom sizes are easily produced, though, and priced by the square inch; if you would like to inquire about a custom size, please contact us.

The Passage of the Dalles, Columbia River, Oregon
Carleton E. Watkins, 1867

Archival prints from $100.00
Click image to enlarge

Few of Watkins’ Columbia River photographs depict nature without at least some indication of human presence. This image is an exception. In choosing where to place his camera and how to frame the view, Watkins portrays a world of elemental states – stone, water, air – a scene so barren as to suggest that this is the way our world looked before living things evolved. Although made in 1867, the photograph allows our imaginations to reach much further back in time.

The photographs in Wild Beauty were meticulously restored and carefully prepared for print reproduction in order to capture the detail and tonal range of the original images. These beautiful archival inkjet prints are made to order from the restored digital files. Our standard sizes denote the paper size; a small border is left around the image to make framing easier. Custom sizes are easily produced, though, and priced by the square inch; if you would like to inquire about a custom size, please contact us.

Cape Horn, Near Celilo
Carleton E. Watkins, 1867

Archival prints from $100.00
Click image to enlarge

This escarpment is about two miles west of the village at Celilo. One of the defining photographs of its age, Watkins’ image juxtaposes the raw beauty of the American West with a vision of pioneer enterprise – symbolized by the promise and prospects of the railroad – that speaks to the aspirations of Manifest Destiny.

The photographs in Wild Beauty were meticulously restored and carefully prepared for print reproduction in order to capture the detail and tonal range of the original images. These beautiful archival inkjet prints are made to order from the restored digital files. Our standard sizes denote the paper size; a small border is left around the image to make framing easier. Custom sizes are easily produced, though, and priced by the square inch; if you would like to inquire about a custom size, please contact us.

The Rapids, Upper Cascades, Columbia River
Carleton E. Watkins, 1882

Archival prints from $100.00
Click image to enlarge

In 1805 explorer William Clark penned a description of the Cascade Rapids: “The waters of this great river Compressed within the Space of 150 paces in which there is great numbers of both large and Small rocks, water passing with great velocity forming & boiling in a most horriable manner, with a fall of about 20 feet.” Watkins was the first photographer to fully realize the camera’s potential to capture the intensity and power of the water’s passage through the Cascades.

The photographs in Wild Beauty were meticulously restored and carefully prepared for print reproduction in order to capture the detail and tonal range of the original images. These beautiful archival inkjet prints are made to order from the restored digital files. Our standard sizes denote the paper size; a small border is left around the image to make framing easier. Custom sizes are easily produced, though, and priced by the square inch; if you would like to inquire about a custom size, please contact us.

Mitchell’s Point
Carleton E. Watkins, 1883

Archival prints from $100.00
Click image to enlarge

Mitchell Point is a landmark on the Oregon side that can be seen for miles up or down the river.

The photographs in Wild Beauty were meticulously restored and carefully prepared for print reproduction in order to capture the detail and tonal range of the original images. These beautiful archival inkjet prints are made to order from the restored digital files. Our standard sizes denote the paper size; a small border is left around the image to make framing easier. Custom sizes are easily produced, though, and priced by the square inch; if you would like to inquire about a custom size, please contact us.

Indian Summer on the Columbia
Carleton E. Watkins, 1883

Archival prints from $100.00
Click image to enlarge

Pleasant temperatures lasted far into autumn in 1883. This is one of several photographs that Watkins made on this visit from the south side of the river in the eastern Gorge, looking down the light. The reflected image of the basalt palisades suggests the stillness of the day, with the low water level providing evidence of the lateness of the season. Watkins’ extraordinary ability to capture light and atmosphere evokes a visceral sense of time and place.

The photographs in Wild Beauty were meticulously restored and carefully prepared for print reproduction in order to capture the detail and tonal range of the original images. These beautiful archival inkjet prints are made to order from the restored digital files. Our standard sizes denote the paper size; a small border is left around the image to make framing easier. Custom sizes are easily produced, though, and priced by the square inch; if you would like to inquire about a custom size, please contact us.

Castle Rock
Arthur B. McAlpin and Charles Lamb, circa 1889

Archival prints from $100.00
Click image to enlarge

The Portland partnership of Arthur McAlpin and Charles Lamb made scenic photographs as far north as Alaska, including a number of images in the Gorge; this one of the feature now known as Beacon Rock is unique in its use of the human figure. Reminiscent of a device used by the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, the figure – called a Rückenfigur, person seen from the rear – functions as a stand-in for the viewer, positioned as if to say: “Look at this wondrous thing.”

The photographs in Wild Beauty were meticulously restored and carefully prepared for print reproduction in order to capture the detail and tonal range of the original images. These beautiful archival inkjet prints are made to order from the restored digital files. Our standard sizes denote the paper size; a small border is left around the image to make framing easier. Custom sizes are easily produced, though, and priced by the square inch; if you would like to inquire about a custom size, please contact us.

Palisades, Columbia River
Frank J. Haynes, mid-1880s

Archival prints from $100.00
Click image to enlarge

Today known as Crown Point, this promontory was sometimes called Thor’s Heights. Frank Haynes was the official photographer for the Northern Pacific Railroad, which by this time had access to the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company’s rail route on the Oregon side of the Gorge, completing its transcontinental line.

The photographs in Wild Beauty were meticulously restored and carefully prepared for print reproduction in order to capture the detail and tonal range of the original images. These beautiful archival inkjet prints are made to order from the restored digital files. Our standard sizes denote the paper size; a small border is left around the image to make framing easier. Custom sizes are easily produced, though, and priced by the square inch; if you would like to inquire about a custom size, please contact us.

Castle Dome
Frank Abell, mid-1880s

Archival prints from $100.00
Click image to enlarge

Frank Abell was a prominent photographer in Portland from 1878 to 1887, better known for portraits than for landscape views, though he made both. This rock formation, now known as Saint Peter’s Dome, has also been called Castle Dome and Cathedral Rock. It stands on the Oregon side of the Gorge just west of Yeon Mountain, which at one time was itself called Saint Peter’s Dome. The photograph illustrates a common occurrence in the Gorge: a talus slope near the maximum angle of repose, the steepest angle that a slope of loose rock can sustain shy of a landslide.

The photographs in Wild Beauty were meticulously restored and carefully prepared for print reproduction in order to capture the detail and tonal range of the original images. These beautiful archival inkjet prints are made to order from the restored digital files. Our standard sizes denote the paper size; a small border is left around the image to make framing easier. Custom sizes are easily produced, though, and priced by the square inch; if you would like to inquire about a custom size, please contact us.

Rooster Rock, Columbia River
William Henry Jackson, circa 1890

Archival prints from $100.00
Click image to enlarge

In the late nineteenth century William Henry Jackson was the most famous photographer of the Rocky Mountain states. Although he embraced the frontier’s wild and forbidding nature, his photography also portrayed its beauty. As photographic curator and historian Eric Paddock notes, “Jackson created an expansive, silent vision of Nature’s refreshing spiritual or psychological dimension. This view echoed the works of American Transcendentalists Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson as well as Romantic nature poets such as John Greenleaf Whittier or William Cullen Bryant, all of whom believed in the innate goodness of Nature.” Thus, the graceful and uncluttered shoreline in Jackson’s composition creates an inviting and tranquil scene that contrasts with the more ragged wilderness in Carleton Watkins’ image of the same locale.

The photographs in Wild Beauty were meticulously restored and carefully prepared for print reproduction in order to capture the detail and tonal range of the original images. These beautiful archival inkjet prints are made to order from the restored digital files. Our standard sizes denote the paper size; a small border is left around the image to make framing easier. Custom sizes are easily produced, though, and priced by the square inch; if you would like to inquire about a custom size, please contact us.

Fishing at the Long Narrows
Bertram C. Towne, circa 1889

Archival prints from $100.00
Click image to enlarge

Bertram Towne operated a successful portrait studio in Portland from 1885 to 1895, but was also known for his scenic photographs of the Columbia River. This view is looking west, from near the western end of the Long Narrows, also known as Fivemile Rapids for its distance upriver from the city of The Dalles. In the 1855 treaties Indians had reserved the rights to fish in their traditional places, including this prime fishing ground where the whole of the river was channeled into a single linear chasm cut deep into the bedrock.

The photographs in Wild Beauty were meticulously restored and carefully prepared for print reproduction in order to capture the detail and tonal range of the original images. These beautiful archival inkjet prints are made to order from the restored digital files. Our standard sizes denote the paper size; a small border is left around the image to make framing easier. Custom sizes are easily produced, though, and priced by the square inch; if you would like to inquire about a custom size, please contact us.

Home Guard on the Columbia
Benjamin A. Gifford, 1899

Archival prints from $100.00
Click image to enlarge

Over the years, Gifford came to think of this image as his most artistic photograph. He printed it in a wide variety of ways, sometimes cropped at top and bottom, often enlarged, and frequently colored by hand. Later versions were titled Sunset on the Columbia. The setting is on the Washington shore above Miller Island, with the Columbia Hills at right and Mt. Hood in the distance to the west.

The photographs in Wild Beauty were meticulously restored and carefully prepared for print reproduction in order to capture the detail and tonal range of the original images. These beautiful archival inkjet prints are made to order from the restored digital files. Our standard sizes denote the paper size; a small border is left around the image to make framing easier. Custom sizes are easily produced, though, and priced by the square inch; if you would like to inquire about a custom size, please contact us.

Fishing from the Natural Arch at Celilo
Benjamin A. Gifford, 1905

Archival prints from $100.00
Click image to enlarge

Looking upriver with the lower portion of Fulton Ridge in the background, this view illustrates the complex interweaving of river and rock in the scabland channels at Celilo Falls.

The photographs in Wild Beauty were meticulously restored and carefully prepared for print reproduction in order to capture the detail and tonal range of the original images. These beautiful archival inkjet prints are made to order from the restored digital files. Our standard sizes denote the paper size; a small border is left around the image to make framing easier. Custom sizes are easily produced, though, and priced by the square inch; if you would like to inquire about a custom size, please contact us.

Jam at the Dalles, Ice from British Columbia
Benjamin A. Gifford, 1909

Archival prints from $100.00
Click image to enlarge

During particularly cold winters, great masses of ice would drift hundreds of miles down the Columbia before being stopped at the convoluted channels of the Dalles. Gifford was one of the few people to photograph the phenomenal quantities of ice that piled up – sometimes for miles – on the rocky passages of the rapids.

The photographs in Wild Beauty were meticulously restored and carefully prepared for print reproduction in order to capture the detail and tonal range of the original images. These beautiful archival inkjet prints are made to order from the restored digital files. Our standard sizes denote the paper size; a small border is left around the image to make framing easier. Custom sizes are easily produced, though, and priced by the square inch; if you would like to inquire about a custom size, please contact us.

Cold and Calm
Fred Kiser and Oscar Kiser, 1903

Archival prints from $100.00
Click image to enlarge

The Kiser brothers grew up in the Gorge, becoming keen observers of the landscape year-round. They were among the first photographers to produce hand-colored images of Gorge scenery, of which this is an early example. The caption they wrote for Cold and Calm in their 1905 volume, Pacific Coast Pictures, begins this way: “Sometimes in extreme weather in midwinter the moisture-laden winds from the sea carry the vapor inland to the middle and upper Columbia, where the cold congeals the vapor in tiny icicles and spiracles upon the trees of the river margin, where the air is heaviest. Then every twig is clothed in armor and fancy cannot picture a more wonderful sight than the tall cottonwoods, which seem transformed to aerial corals.”

The photographs in Wild Beauty were meticulously restored and carefully prepared for print reproduction in order to capture the detail and tonal range of the original images. These beautiful archival inkjet prints are made to order from the restored digital files. Our standard sizes denote the paper size; a small border is left around the image to make framing easier. Custom sizes are easily produced, though, and priced by the square inch; if you would like to inquire about a custom size, please contact us.

Saint Peter’s Dome
Fred Kiser and Oscar Kiser, circa 1903

Archival prints from $100.00
Click image to enlarge

In Pacific Coast Pictures the Kiser brothers noted that from the place they made this image, twenty-three hundred feet above river level, “the rock is almost appalling, rising, ringed with terraces of columnar basalt which are belted around it like mighty girdles, 800 feet. No building in the world exhibits a tower so noble, and its symmetry seems preternatural.”

The photographs in Wild Beauty were meticulously restored and carefully prepared for print reproduction in order to capture the detail and tonal range of the original images. These beautiful archival inkjet prints are made to order from the restored digital files. Our standard sizes denote the paper size; a small border is left around the image to make framing easier. Custom sizes are easily produced, though, and priced by the square inch; if you would like to inquire about a custom size, please contact us.

Celilo Falls, Low Water
Fred Kiser and Oscar Kiser, 1903

Archival prints from $100.00
Click image to enlarge

The photographs in Wild Beauty were meticulously restored and carefully prepared for print reproduction in order to capture the detail and tonal range of the original images. These beautiful archival inkjet prints are made to order from the restored digital files. Our standard sizes denote the paper size; a small border is left around the image to make framing easier. Custom sizes are easily produced, though, and priced by the square inch; if you would like to inquire about a custom size, please contact us.

Untitled
Edward Ledgerwood, circa 1910

Archival prints from $100.00
Click image to enlarge

Edward Ledgerwood had a photography studio in The Dalles from 1909 to 1917, advertising “outside views” as his specialty.

The photographs in Wild Beauty were meticulously restored and carefully prepared for print reproduction in order to capture the detail and tonal range of the original images. These beautiful archival inkjet prints are made to order from the restored digital files. Our standard sizes denote the paper size; a small border is left around the image to make framing easier. Custom sizes are easily produced, though, and priced by the square inch; if you would like to inquire about a custom size, please contact us.

Untitled
Arthur M. Prentiss, circa 1914

Archival prints from $100.00
Click image to enlarge

This is the earliest known version of what has become a signature view of the Columbia River Gorge. It was made looking upriver from the Chanticleer Inn, a restaurant that was about twenty miles east of Portland on the Oregon side. The buildings near the center of the photograph were home to a salmon cannery; to the left of the cannery is Rooster Rock. Above and to the right is the parapet at Crown Point where the Vista House would soon be built, and Sand Island is upriver on the south side. About halfway along the Washington side the rock formation known as Cape Horn juts out into the river. Just to the right Lone Rock, now known as Phoca Rock, is barely visible, and in the far distance is Castle Rock, now Beacon Rock. The Chanticleer Inn burned in 1930, and its site is the location of Women’s Forum State Park.

The photographs in Wild Beauty were meticulously restored and carefully prepared for print reproduction in order to capture the detail and tonal range of the original images. These beautiful archival inkjet prints are made to order from the restored digital files. Our standard sizes denote the paper size; a small border is left around the image to make framing easier. Custom sizes are easily produced, though, and priced by the square inch; if you would like to inquire about a custom size, please contact us.

Oneonta Gorge
Darius Kinsey and Tabitha Kinsey, 1923

Archival prints from $100.00
Click image to enlarge

Darius Kinsey and Tabitha Kinsey were a husband-and-wife photography partnership for nearly fifty years; he took photographs and she developed and printed them. Based in Seattle, the pair concentrated on images of the logging industry and scenic views of the Northwest. Oneonta Gorge, a narrow chasm perpendicular to the Columbia Gorge about a mile east of Multnomah Falls, leads back to a hundred-foot waterfall.

The photographs in Wild Beauty were meticulously restored and carefully prepared for print reproduction in order to capture the detail and tonal range of the original images. These beautiful archival inkjet prints are made to order from the restored digital files. Our standard sizes denote the paper size; a small border is left around the image to make framing easier. Custom sizes are easily produced, though, and priced by the square inch; if you would like to inquire about a custom size, please contact us.

Metlako Falls
Clarence L. Winter, circa 1916

Archival prints from $100.00
Click image to enlarge

This is one of the earliest known photographs of lovely Metlako Falls, the upstream limit of fish migration on Eagle Creek, a tributary to the Columbia on the Oregon side.

The photographs in Wild Beauty were meticulously restored and carefully prepared for print reproduction in order to capture the detail and tonal range of the original images. These beautiful archival inkjet prints are made to order from the restored digital files. Our standard sizes denote the paper size; a small border is left around the image to make framing easier. Custom sizes are easily produced, though, and priced by the square inch; if you would like to inquire about a custom size, please contact us.

Untitled
George Weister, circa 1912

Archival prints from $100.00
Click image to enlarge

When the Bonneville Landslide dammed the Columbia in about 1450, it drowned some thirty-five miles of trees upriver. The stumps in the river – the submerged forest – were most visible along the south shore, across from Wind Mountain.

The photographs in Wild Beauty were meticulously restored and carefully prepared for print reproduction in order to capture the detail and tonal range of the original images. These beautiful archival inkjet prints are made to order from the restored digital files. Our standard sizes denote the paper size; a small border is left around the image to make framing easier. Custom sizes are easily produced, though, and priced by the square inch; if you would like to inquire about a custom size, please contact us.

Windows, Mitchell Point Tunnel
George Weister, circa 1915

Archival prints from $100.00
Click image to enlarge

Lancaster’s tunnel of many vistas was modeled after a tunnel on Switzerland’s Axenstrasse. The Mitchell Point tunnel of the Scenic Highway had five of these windows, each framing a grand view of the Columbia.

The photographs in Wild Beauty were meticulously restored and carefully prepared for print reproduction in order to capture the detail and tonal range of the original images. These beautiful archival inkjet prints are made to order from the restored digital files. Our standard sizes denote the paper size; a small border is left around the image to make framing easier. Custom sizes are easily produced, though, and priced by the square inch; if you would like to inquire about a custom size, please contact us.

Glimpse of the Columbia
George Weister, circa 1916

Archival prints from $100.00
Click image to enlarge

Weister made this image along a section of the highway about a mile east of Mitchell Point. His observation of this natural still life shows the mix of trees and other vegetation that occur in the transition zone from the wetter, fir-covered slopes of the western Gorge to the eastern Gorge’s more arid landscape of scrub oak and pine.

The photographs in Wild Beauty were meticulously restored and carefully prepared for print reproduction in order to capture the detail and tonal range of the original images. These beautiful archival inkjet prints are made to order from the restored digital files. Our standard sizes denote the paper size; a small border is left around the image to make framing easier. Custom sizes are easily produced, though, and priced by the square inch; if you would like to inquire about a custom size, please contact us.

Untitled
Unknown photographer, early 1930s

Archival prints from $100.00
Click image to enlarge

This early aerial photograph of the Columbia River Gorge was taken about five miles upriver from the Cascade Rapids, looking east. To the left is Collins Point, in front of the lower slope of Dog Mountain. At the lower right is a portion of the submerged forest, with Shellrock Mountain beyond.

The photographs in Wild Beauty were meticulously restored and carefully prepared for print reproduction in order to capture the detail and tonal range of the original images. These beautiful archival inkjet prints are made to order from the restored digital files. Our standard sizes denote the paper size; a small border is left around the image to make framing easier. Custom sizes are easily produced, though, and priced by the square inch; if you would like to inquire about a custom size, please contact us.

Untitled
Unknown photographer, 1950

Archival prints from $100.00
Click image to enlarge

In February 1950 the Army Corps of Engineers made a series of aerial photographs of winter con­ditions on the river between Bonneville Dam and Celilo Falls. This image of the Hood River Bridge shows the remarkable patterns of ice that formed on the Columbia at its confluence with the Hood River. The arc of fragmented ice was formed in the wake of barge traffic.

The photographs in Wild Beauty were meticulously restored and carefully prepared for print reproduction in order to capture the detail and tonal range of the original images. These beautiful archival inkjet prints are made to order from the restored digital files. Our standard sizes denote the paper size; a small border is left around the image to make framing easier. Custom sizes are easily produced, though, and priced by the square inch; if you would like to inquire about a custom size, please contact us.

Elements of Earth
Alfred A. Monner, 1953

Archival prints from $100.00
Click image to enlarge

Monner came upon this pairing of white lenticular clouds with deep shadows on the Columbia Hills while driving along Washington Highway 14. The result was one of his favorite photographs, an image that he exhibited on multiple occasions.

The photographs in Wild Beauty were meticulously restored and carefully prepared for print reproduction in order to capture the detail and tonal range of the original images. These beautiful archival inkjet prints are made to order from the restored digital files. Our standard sizes denote the paper size; a small border is left around the image to make framing easier. Custom sizes are easily produced, though, and priced by the square inch; if you would like to inquire about a custom size, please contact us.

Untitled
Alfred A. Monner, 1953

Archival prints from $100.00
Click image to enlarge

At Celilo Falls cable cars provided access to prime fishing locations surrounded by raging water. The first such vehicle was built in 1907 by the Seufert family.

The photographs in Wild Beauty were meticulously restored and carefully prepared for print reproduction in order to capture the detail and tonal range of the original images. These beautiful archival inkjet prints are made to order from the restored digital files. Our standard sizes denote the paper size; a small border is left around the image to make framing easier. Custom sizes are easily produced, though, and priced by the square inch; if you would like to inquire about a custom size, please contact us.