Shop | Exhibition Merchandise

In 1868, photographer Andrew J. Russell (1830-1902) traveled west to document construction of the Union Pacific Railroad from Omaha, Nebraska, to Promontory Summit, Utah.  The resutls of this partnership were published the following year in an album, The Great West Illustrated, which is recognized as one of the most important photographic projects of the nineteenth century.  Its fifty images highlight the Union Pacific's engineering skill as well as a landscape that is both challenging and dramatic.  Russell's photographs are a remarkable account of the American West at the moment of its transformation by what was arguably the greatest industrial accomplishment of the nineteenth century.