188 of 201 lots
188
Western Americana -- California WATKINS, Carleton (1829-1916), photographer. Malakoff Diggins, North Bloomfield, Nevada County, Cal. San Francisco, CA: ca 1871.
Estimate: $1,000-$1,500
Sold
$800
Live Auction
Visions of America: The Stephen White Collection
Description

Western Americana -- California
WATKINS, Carleton (1829-1916), photographer. Malakoff Diggins, North Bloomfield, Nevada County, Cal. San Francisco, CA: ca 1871.


15 3/8 x 21 1/8 in. mammoth plate albumen photograph housed in 22 x 28 in. mount. Penciled caption and ink stamp on verso, "Watkins New Series, 427 Montgomery St., S.F."

An expansive view of Malakoff Diggins, the largest hydraulic mining site in California. The mine was one of several hydraulic mining sites at the center of the 1882 landmark case Woodruff v. North Bloomfield Mining and Gravel Company, in which the company was sued by a group of local farmers over damages caused to farmland in the Central Valley.

Born in Oneonta, NY, Carleton Emmons Watkins moved to California in 1851 apprenticing in the photography studio of Robert H. Vance. First visiting Yosemite in 1861, Watkins' photographs of the area gained international acclaim. He operated the Yosemite Gallery throughout San Francisco until the mid-1870s when interest waned and he was forced to sell his gallery and the first series of Yosemite negatives in 1875. Watkins continued his photographic career in the American West, producing some of the earliest photographs of Southern California and the Pacific Northwest, before losing much of his work in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. 

Condition
Uneven toning to print.