The daguerreotype, the earliest photographic process, reached the US from Europe in 1840 and was seized upon by early adopters. Pioneering photographers traveled far and wide, capturing portraits of leading local citizens, natural landscapes, engineering feats, expeditions into unchartered areas, and documenting important moments from the American Civil War.
Click through the gallery for incredible images from each state in the US as it looked in the mid-19th century...
Taken in 1859, this photograph shows the campus of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. An elegant, Classical Revival rotunda building, it was designed by English architect William Nichols and opened to students in 1831. Before the American Civil War broke out, the university had been converted to a military-style institution by the Confederate states. Just a few years after this image was taken, it was razed to the ground by the Union army, and it took seven years to rebuild and reopen to students.
This photograph of some of Alaska's First Nations people was captured just after the United States had purchased the territory from the Russian Empire – a deal that took place in 1867. The stereoscopic image, a popular early photography technique that captured two mirror images, was taken in Fort Tongass, the first US Army base in Alaska. It operated on Tongass Island, part of the Alexander Archipelago in southeast Alaska, between 1868 and 1870, alongside the island's Indigenous Tlingit population.
This stereoscopic image by prestigious 19th-century photographer Timothy H. O'Sullivan captures people gathered for a boat expedition led by Lieutenant George Wheeler. The survey team departed from Fort Mojave, a military post on the eastern bank of the Colorado River, to chart territory along the Colorado River, traveling through the Grand Canyon up to the mouth of Diamond Creek. O'Sullivan joined the expedition, which covered 260 miles (418km) in 31 days, to document the landscapes and new discoveries.
This early image offers a rare glimpse of sailors aboard the USS Queen City, pictured on the White River in Arkansas in 1861 at the start of the American Civil War. The steamer was bought by the Union Navy in 1863 and used to patrol the waterways of eastern Arkansas, protecting trade barges from land attacks by Confederate troops. Not to great success, however, as the gunboat was captured and destroyed by the Confederate cavalry in June 1864.
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New York-born Carleton Watkins was a renowned early pioneer of photography, publishing landscape images that brought the grandeur of the country’s natural wonders to the masses. Based in San Francisco, he traveled to Yosemite Valley in the 1860s and captured some of the first and most famous shots of the wilderness, including this one of thundering Bridalveil Fall, a sight that still enthralls photographers today. It was captured with a special camera he commissioned so he could make enlarged negatives of the landscapes.
Set high in the mountains of Clear Creek County, Idaho Springs was the site of Colorado’s first gold mining boom in 1859. Pictured here is the busy settlement that sprang up after fortune seekers flocked to try their luck on hearing the news that a prospector named George Jackson had found gold in the Vasquez Creek (now known as the Clear Creek river). The settlement evolved into a bustling town that was home to many grand late-19th-century buildings financed by the area's newfound fortunes.
Taken in the early 1860s, this group of women is shown playing croquet on the grass at Wethersfield Prison for Women with two top-hatted gents looking on. Their identities are unknown, but given their fine attire and leisurely activity, it’s unlikely they were inmates of the jail. Wethersfield State Prison opened in 1827 and had a four-story cell block along with a women’s department and warden’s residence – possibly where this image was taken. Located on the Connecticut River, the prison was in use until 1963.
Taken in 1892, this photograph shows the importance of shipbuilding as a major industry in Wilmington, the largest city in Delaware. The river port was established by Swedish settlers in 1638, which makes it the oldest permanent European settlement in the Delaware River valley. It became a prosperous port in the 18th century and a major mill town by the 19th century, with heavy industry developing apace after the completion of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad in 1837.
This street scene shows Key West when it was Florida's largest city. The tiny island became a US territory in 1822 and a designated Port of Entry in 1828, and saw a huge population boom as the wrecking industry became its main trade. By the 1830s, the rough-and-tumble port was Florida’s largest city and the richest in America, per capita. It remained so into the late 19th century though its main trade had switched to sponges by the 1870s. By the time this photograph was taken, it had become Florida's most populous city.
This stereograph was taken by George N Barnard and shows a seemingly innocuous street scene. But look closer and you can see a sign announcing a slave auction and a man sitting in front of the store with a rifle propped next to him. The building is Crawford, Fraser & Company, a slave market that operated on Whitehall Street in Atlanta. It was one of several places in the southern city where enslaved people (which then accounted for one in every five Atlanta residents) were traded before the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in 1865.
Leprosy was surprisingly common in the Hawaiian Islands in the mid-1800s. To combat the disease, King Kamehameha V banished all those suffering from the disease to the isolated Kalaupapa Peninsula on the north shore of Molokai. The colony was run by a Belgian missionary known as Father Damien, who came to Hawaii in 1863 to care for those afflicted. After 16 years of faithful service he succumbed to the disease too. Here we see Father Damien with his flock outside the church he built to tend their souls. In 2009 he was canonised as a saint.
This stereograph shows the narrow canyon of the Portneuf River as it runs through the Bannock Range in the southeast of Idaho. During the 1860s, when people began settling in this remote region after gold was found, it was a notorious area for stagecoach robberies with bandits targeting wagons as they traveled through the rugged canyon between Utah's Salt Lake City and the mines at Virginia City in Montana. Idaho was established as a territory in 1863 and admitted to the Union as a state on July 3, 1890.
This street scene was taken in Chicago in 1877 when the city was the railroad hub of the country. Although this image shows a calm and quiet city, this was the year of the Great Railroad Strike, which took place in July and caused the entire railroad system to grind to a halt. During this period of violent civil unrest around the US, workers flocked to picket lines and demonstrations in disputes over wages, hours and working conditions. Riots broke out too with around 100 deaths during the clashes and 1,000 people subsequently jailed.
Wagons line a street in Iowa City in 1854, a seismic time for the city’s growth. It had around 1,250 residents in 1850 but grew to more than 5,200 within a decade. The settlement built by the Iowa River was chosen as the territorial capital of Iowa in 1839 and seven years on, Iowa became the USA's 29th state when it was formally admitted to the Union on December 28, 1846. Iowa City lost its capital status in 1857, though, when it was replaced by Des Moines.
Taken by one of the country’s pioneering photographers Alexander Gardner in 1867, this stereograph shows cattle on Massachusetts Street in Lawrence. It was the main street in the town, and named after its founders' home state of Massachusetts. Lawrence was established in 1854 by the New England Emigrant Aid Company, a group of slavery abolitionists from Boston who wanted to form a town in the territory and ensure Kansas would be a free state in the Union.
Attributed to 19th-century war photographer Andrew D. Lytle, who took shots for the Confederate Army, this image was likely taken between 1861 and 1865 as the Civil War raged. It shows the Louisiana School for the Deaf, established in Baton Rouge in 1852. At the time of this photograph, it had been taken over by Union forces and was a hospital treating injured soldiers. When Union gunboats targeted Baton Rouge, the school’s assistant matron rowed out to request the gunships avoid the school. They didn’t.
A construction team can be seen standing on the flatbed wagons of this steam train as it crosses the Kennebec River in Maine. The stereoscopic image depicts the early stages of the construction of the Knox and Lincoln Railroad, which ran between Bath and Rockland. It was captured during the 1860s, with the route first chartered in 1864 and completed in 1871. Constructing the country’s burgeoning railroad system was a tough job with harsh and unforgiving working conditions.
The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was the first commercial railway to transport both freight and passengers in the US. Construction of the groundbreaking route, which was to connect Baltimore with the Ohio River, began in Baltimore Harbor in 1828 and the first section opened to steam trains in 1830. It ran to Ellicott’s Mills (now Ellicott City). Pictured here is a steam engine on a railway bridge along the route, which was eventually completed at Wheeling in West Virginia in 1852.
This is one of the earliest photographs of the oldest public park in the US, Boston Common. It shows two ladies resting on a bench by the pond. Dating back to 1634, the historic common land was purchased by Puritan colonists who grouped together to buy the 44-acre area from William Blackstone, an Anglican minister and the first European settler in the region, to graze livestock. This stereograph was taken by early photographer and publisher Benjamin W Kilburn, who took many early images of landscapes in the US and Canada.
This scene shows carriages waiting for passengers on Mackinac Island in the Upper Great Lakes. It was taken in the 1890s, when the area had become a summer resort for wealthy Midwesterners. Mackinac was the most important French fur-trade site in the 17th century, while part of New France, and continued to be at the center of the Great Lakes’ flourishing fur trade well into the 1800s, before tourism became its main economy. You’ll still see horse-drawn carriages here today – cars were banned from the island more than 125 years ago.
Taken in 1862 near Fort Ridgely, a military outpost in southwestern Minnesota, this early photograph captures the weary looks of a group of white settlers. They had fled from a confrontation between the Dakota people (or the Sioux) and Fifth Minnesota Infantry Regiment. It was the beginning of the Dakota War of 1862, which culminated in 38 men of the Dakota tribe being hanged in Mankato – the largest mass execution in US history.
This early photograph shows steamboats lining the banks of the Mississippi River in 1850. River steamboats are still indelibly associated with Mississippi. The new mode of transport was used for travel, trade, and communication from the early 1800s, reaching its zenith between the 1830s and 1860s. These steamers are carrying logs but they were also used to transport cotton, a major industry for the southern states; and enslaved people, who were shipped along the waterway to work in the cotton plantations of the Deep South.
Taken by photographers Ragan and Shannon, this stereoscopic view shows how Kansas City looked in 1870. At this time in the city’s history, which was first settled by French fur traders in the early 1800s, cattle trading was a major industry. After the American Civil War, its population prospered thanks in no small part to the advent of the country’s railroads and first railway bridge, the Hannibal Bridge, being built across the Missouri River, which crucially connected the city with Chicago.
With its roots in the Gold Rush era and fur trapper trade, Helena – aka the Queen City of the Rockies – became a prosperous center, drawing merchants and bankers along with miners and prospectors to settle. This image of a rough-and-ready dirt track town was captured in 1865, just a year after it was founded. But a decade later, the frontier town was named capital of the territory of Montana, and later state capital when Montana was admitted to the Union in 1889.
This view of 13th and Farnam Streets in Omaha was captured in 1863, only nine years after the city was officially founded. You can see the Nebraska Territorial Capitol building on the horizon. Some of the first white settlers arrived in Omaha during the Mormon Migration of 1846, when followers of the religious group were forced to leave Nauvoo in Illinois and headed west. They established Winter Quarters in northern Omaha, and went on from there to the Salt Lake Valley between 1846 and 1869. The city’s Mormon Trail Center tells of this mass migration of around 70,000 followers.
Taken in 1875 by Timothy H. O'Sullivan, a prolific 19th-century photographer notable for his images of the American Civil War, this image shows a group of Paiute Indians in a typical landscape of Nevada. It is unclear whether they are the Northern Paiute or Southern Paiute which, along with the Washoe and the Western Shoshone, are the four Native American tribes who have tribal lands in Nevada. Some are wearing western clothing while others are in traditional attire.
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Taken from New Yorker Robert N Dennis's collection of more than 72,000 stereographs, this landscape image is thought to have been taken at Salmon Falls River where it joins the Cocheco River near Dover in New Hampshire. It shows a smartly dressed lady enjoying a walk in the foreground. The Robert N Dennis Collection of Stereoscopic Views, which is held at the New York Public Library, is an incredible record of everyday life and landscapes in the US from the 1850s to the 1910s.
Published in 1870 and titled 'View of Centre Market, Newark,' this early photograph was taken by G C Robinson & Co, a New York photography company, and shows stores including a pharmacy and Atwater & Carter Teas & Wines, plus horses attached to wagons loaded with hay or grazing on the grass. Newark is one of the country's oldest cities, founded in 1666 by Puritans from Connecticut who purchased the land from the Delaware tribe of Indians. By this time, it was a major manufacturing and transportation center thanks to its proximity to New York.
This daguerreotype of an Upper Manhattan home was taken in 1848 and is considered one of the oldest existing photographs of New York City. It shows a large white house on a grassy hill with a picket fence encircling it, believed to be on what was known as the old Bloomingdale Road, now in the Upper West Side. The historic image was sold at a Sotheby’s auction in 2009 for $62,500. The mid to late-1840s was a pivotal time for the rapidly expanding city, which saw the mass influx of Irish people during the Great Potato Famine in this period.
Early photographers captured iconic images of some of the most awe-inspiring natural landscapes in the US, such as these spectacular sandstone cliffs at El Morro. This image by Timothy H. O'Sullivan shows the south side of what’s now known as Inscription Rock, so called because of the various symbols, names, dates, and other inscriptions that have been etched in the stone over the centuries by Ancestral Puebloans, the Spanish, and early European-American explorers.
A disturbing vignette from the Robert N Dennis collection of stereoscopic views, this early photographic image shows the back-breaking work enslaved people endured to collect turpentine in the longleaf pine forests of North Carolina. From the mid-19th century, the state’s economy was centered around naval stores – goods like turpentine, rosin, tar, and pitch used to build and maintain ships – with many thousands of slaves forced to work in the forests along the coastal plains.
Wagons and riders assemble for General George Custer’s Black Hills Expedition in 1874. He led cavalry, surveyors, geologists, reporters and two photographers through what is now North and South Dakota. Custer was under government orders to scout a location for a new military fort, find a route southwest, and look for natural resources. They discovered gold, sparking a rush on Sioux nation land, and white prospectors' violation of the land ownership treaty led to the Great Sioux War in 1876, which saw Custer killed at the Battle of Little Bighorn.
This daguerreotype image of Cincinnati shows a steamboat on the Ohio River, taken in 1848. The city was one of the fastest growing in the country, attracting huge numbers of immigrants. By 1850, nearly half the population was foreign-born, primarily from Germany and Ireland. The river was a major trade route with the first steamboat launched here in 1811, allowing trade between the Mississippi and Ohio rivers and making the city an economic powerhouse. Steamboat building was the main industry, along with pork, whiskey, and beer.
Taken on April 27, 1889 by photography agency Mitchell and DeGroff, this image documents people making a claim for cheap land five days after President Benjamin Harrison opened up Indian Territory, a large land area that covered most of what later became Oklahoma, to white settlers. This image shows Guthrie, where several Native American tribes had been relocated from their traditional lands to allow for white settlement, and one of a number of tent cities that appeared overnight.
This photograph shows the Portage railroad of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company and was taken by Carleton Watkins in 1867. He traveled the West Coast, capturing flourishing Portland and the Columbia River Gorge. According to the Oregon Historical Society, the train is on the south bank of the Columbia River and must have stopped so Watkins could shoot the striking setting, as cameras couldn't yet capture objects in motion. Documenting the expanding railroad network in dramatic landscapes was a feature of Watkins’ later work.
This 1839 daguerreotype taken by Joseph Saxton is thought to be the oldest surviving photograph taken in the US. It captures Philadelphia's Central High School, founded in 1836. Saxton was a watchmaker and inventor, and studied in London, where he found a passion for photography. The image was taken from his office at the Philadelphia Mint opposite the school. Today, a plaque commemorates the achievement, stating the USA’s earliest photograph was captured there by Saxton “using a cigar box and crude lens”.
An albumen print by James Wallace Black shows the romantic ruins of a Martello-style defensive tower on Dumpling Rocks in Jamestown. Known as Fort Dumpling, it was built between 1799 and 1800 to protect Newport Harbor and was one of a series of forts around Narragansett Bay, built by American colonists to prevent British attacks. By the time the photograph was taken the fort was dilapidated – it was demolished in 1898 during a modernization of the bay’s defense systems.
Captured by Timothy H. O'Sullivan in 1862, this photograph was taken on a cotton plantation in Port Royal Island and shows African Americans standing next to their living quarters. They were likely newly freed citizens as South Carolina’s Sea Islands were occupied by the Union Army from November 1861, causing plantation owners to flee, and leaving around 10,000 formerly enslaved people on the isles. The initiative to prepare them for life as free citizens became known as the Port Royal Experiment.
A crowd of prospectors, miners and muleskinners can be seen on this stereoscopic image that shows Main Street in Deadwood in the Dakota Territory (now South Dakota). Located in the Black Hills National Forest, the archetypal Wild West town shot up in popularity after gold was discovered in a creek. It became famed for gunslingers like Wild Bill Hickok and its high concentration of brothels. As this image shows, it really was as rough and tumble as the stories say.
This portrait shows a group of men standing in front of a store in Tennessee, with some wearing Confederate uniforms. The Upper South state was deeply divided over the issue of slavery, with its western districts – home to many cotton and tobacco plantations – reliant on the forced labor of enslaved African Americans. After the Civil War broke out, Tennessee became the final member of the Confederate States of America, but divisions remained with Tennessee soldiers serving on both sides.
This image shows the Tigua Indians of Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, now part of El Paso in the state of Texas, by the Ysleta Mission. The church, which the tribe helped build in 1682, is still there today and is the oldest continuously operated parish in Texas. Ysleta del Sur Pueblo is the oldest recognized community in the Lone Star state and the Tigua Tribal Council is its oldest government.
A raging inferno on June 6, 1889, was a seismic moment for Seattle, then a little-known frontier town on Elliott Bay, which had to rebuild itself after the tightly packed wooden buildings of its business district were razed to the ground. This photograph shows Seattle's fire-damaged brick buildings just after the disaster. The blaze was caused by an overheated cast-iron glue pot which bubbled over and ignited turpentine-soaked wood shavings in a carpenter's shop. The rebuild led to an influx of people and a population boom.
Taken in 1861 at the outset of the American Civil War, this photograph shows the small industrial town of Harpers Ferry on the Shenandoah River in Virginia. Two years earlier the federal military arsenal in the town, then part of Virginia, was attacked by a group of armed abolitionists led by John Brown. The raid failed and Brown was arrested and later executed. The western counties of Virginia broke away from the rest of the state during the war and were admitted to the Union as a separate state on June 20, 1863.
Taken on April 29, 1868, this historic photograph shows Lieutenant General William T Sherman and leaders of the Sioux Nation signing the Treaty of Fort Laramie in Wyoming. It was an agreement that the tribes would relocate to the Black Hills in the Dakota Territory, which would be part of the Great Sioux Reservation and off-limits to white settlers. That agreement would be broken just six years later, in 1874, after General Custer’s Black Hills expedition and gold discovery caused a land grab on the reservation.
Gathering in front of the family home was a staple of photography by the 1870s, capturing portraits that provide a fascinating glimpse into American domestic life. This one was taken in 1871 of Abraham C Martin, a farmer and dairyman, with his large family in front of their farmhouse in Springfield. Wondering why they look so serious? They had to remain still throughout the lengthy exposure time, so smiles would have long faded.
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