This photograph of Mount Watkins was taken at Mirror Lake, Yosemite National Park, at sunset, with the mountain reflected in the lake. The name given to the mountain by the original inhabitants of Yosemite (the Ahwahneechees) was “Waijau” (Wai-j’au), meaning “pine mountain”.
The true and epic story of the Ahwahneechees and their Chief Tenaya is re-told in the historical novel Great Spirit of Yosemite: The Story of Chief Tenaya. This Yosemite National Park book re-tells the astonishing story of the Ahwahneechees during the California Gold Rush as they try to resist the invasion of their homelands in 1850/51 by the Mariposa Battalion.
The mountain was renamed Mount Watkins by the California State Geological Survey in recognition of Carleton E. Watkins after his photos were included in “The Yosemite Book”, published in 1868. Additionally, the full story of Watkins and his tragic life is given below the photo.
The Naming of Mount Watkins, Yosemite National Park
Mount Watkins was named after Carleton E. Watkins. He was born in New York in 1829 and moved to San Francisco in 1851. Subsequently, he took up photography, and in 1858 purchased a mammoth-plate camera and stereoscopic camera. He then traveled to Yosemite in July 1861 and took some of the first photographs of the area. Afterward, he returned with thirty mammoth plates and one hundred stereoview negatives.
The Yosemite Book
In 1864 he was hired by the California State Geological Survey, and thereafter 24 of his photos were selected for inclusion in “The Yosemite Book”, published in 1868. This book was recognized as one of the best Yosemite California travel books. Later, in 1867, he opened his first public gallery on Montgomery Street in San Francisco. This became his “Yosemite Art Gallery”. Also in 1868, he was awarded first place for California landscape photography at the Paris International Exposition. In 1870 the “European Art Journal” also exclaimed that it was “no small satisfaction to credit an American artist for the great Yosemite Pictures.”
Throughout his career, Watkins photographed a good deal of the Pacific Coast area, including Yellowstone to the north and Tucson, Arizona to the south. He also photographed all of California’s missions.
Watkins’s Marriage and Failing Health
He met Frances Sneed when he was photographing in Virginia City, and they married in 1879. The couple had two children, a daughter Julia in 1881, and a son Collis in 1883. Tragically, he began to lose his sight in the 1890s.
His last commission was to photograph Phoebe Hearst’s Hacienda del Pozo de Verona but was unable to finish due to his failing sight and health. In 1895-96, lack of work sadly led to his inability to pay rent. Thereafter, the Watkins family had to live in an abandoned railroad car for eighteen months before his friend Collis Huntington deeded Capay Ranch to him.
Watkins kept most of his work in a studio that was destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, with it countless pictures, negatives, and the majority of his stereoviews. After this horrific loss, he retired to Capay Ranch. Three years later he was declared incompetent and put into the care of his daughter, Julia. She cared for him for a year before committing him in 1910 to the Napa State Hospital for the Insane. Watkins died in 1916 at the age of 87 and was buried in an unmarked grave on the hospital grounds.
Watkins’s stereo views are now rare. Nearly all of the works left with us today are those saved by his good friend Charles Turrill.
Hi, I am Paul, photographer, and author of the historical novel “Great Spirit of Yosemite: The Story of Chief Tenaya”. This ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ illustrated book is available in eBook and paperback formats through all major online booksellers from $2.99 (e.g. Amazon, Bookshop.org, IndieBound, Apple Books, etc) - details can be found in "Purchasing Options" in the "About the Book" drop-down.