Cañon of the Rio Las Animas

On an especially sunny day in southwestern Colorado, William Henry Jackson stood beside the Rio de Las Animas Perdidas--River of Lost Souls--and pointed his camera slightly upward. From that position he photographed five individuals posed in front of a train making its way through a remote, rocky pass. This steep, craggy mountain was one of many into which workers carved roadbeds for railroad tracks. Piles of small chips lining the edge of the river below reveal that the workers disposed of the waste by simply throwing it to the side. Railroads both promoted such engineering feats and united distant places, but Jackson referred to neither in titling his image. On a boulder in the bottom left corner, he merely wrote, "1077A, Cañon of the Rio Asanimas, W.H. Jackson, Denver, CO."