How the West looked

Rico says his friend Marc forwards these:

These remarkable nineteenth century sepia-tinted pictures show the American West in the first photos ever taken of its rocky and barren landscape, during Lieutenant George M. Wheeler's survey of the One Hundredth Meridian that lasted from 1871 to 1874, travelling across Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and the West as to uncover untapped natural resources. 

Timothy O'Sullivan (photo, left), who used a box camera, worked with the Government teams as they explored the land. He had earlier covered the Civil War and was one of the most famous photographers of the nineteenth century. He also took pictures of the Native American population for the first time, as a team of artists, photographers, scientists, and soldiers explored the land in the 1860s and 1870s.The images of the landscape were remarkable because the majority of people at the time would not have known they were there or have ever had a chance to see it for themselves.
O'Sullivan died from tuberculosis at the age of 42 in 1882, mere years after the project had finished .
He carted a dark room wagon around the Wild West on horseback so that he could develop his images. He spent seven years exploring the landscape and thousands of pictures have survived from his travels. The project was designed to attract settlers to the largely uninhabited region.O'Sullivan used a primitive wet plate box camera which he would have to spend several minutes setting up every time he wanted to take a photograph. He would have to assemble the device on a tripod, coat a glass plate with collodion, a flammable solution. The glass would then be put in a holder before being inserted into a camera. After a multiple second exposure, he would rush the plate to his dark room wagon and cover it in chemicals to begin the development process.Considered one of the forerunners to Ansel Adams, Timothy O'Sullivan is a hero to other photographers, according to the Tucson Weekly.
'Most of the photographers sent to document the West's native peoples and its geologic formations tried to make this strange new land accessible, even picturesque,' said Keith McElroy, a history of photography professor in Tucson. "His photographs picture scenes, like a flimsy boat helpless against the dark shadows of Black Canyon, or explorers almost swallowed up by the crevices of Canyon de Chelly."