Dam and Lake, Nevada County, Near View

Barely visible behind the log-and-gravel dam, an impressive structure that blends with the landscape because of the use of natural materials, the glassy lake reflects the standing trees. A tiny figure atop the dam just to the right of center indicates its scale, while the breadth and clarity of Carleton Watkins's view encompasses both the tree-pocked mountaintops and the falls bursting through the dam break at the frame's lower right center edge. The photograph divides neatly into layers defined by shifts in tones, giving the vertical and horizontal lines of tree trunks the overall appearance of striated rock. This image is part of a series that Watkins made of North Bloomfield, Nevada, gravel mines.