promoting tourism and development at crater lake...exhibit booklet that accompanied yosemite...

OHQ vol. 116, no. 3

GAIL E. EVANS

Promoting Tourism and Development at Crater Lake

© 25 Oregon Historical Society

The Art of Grace Russell Fountain and Mabel Russell Lowther

PAINTINGS AND PHOTOGRAPHS have played a significant role in focusing public attention on certain western landscapes in North America and, ultimately, in encouraging their conservation and use as national parks. The paintings of artists such as John James Audubon (785–85) and George Catlin (796–872) initially brought public attention to scenic landscapes of the American West during the first half of the 8s. Historian Dwight Pitcaithley, among others, has attributed to Catlin the idea of parks for people and wildlife. During an 82 trip to the Dakotas, as Catlin captured images and recorded his thoughts about the value of western lands, he also mused on the idea that government might create a “magnificent park . . . a nation’s park, containing man and beast in all the wild and freshness of nature’s beauty.”2 During the following decades, artists, photographers, and writers advanced the national park idea with images of the Yosemite Valley, both pictorial and verbal, that appeared in popular magazines and were exhibited in the East, influencing decisions to designate Yosemite and the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias as a national park, managed by the State of California. Over the first half of the twentieth century, paintings, photographs, and descriptions continued to encourage the designation of national parks and raise public awareness of those places. The work of artists such as Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran, Thomas Hill, and scores of other men sparked interest in setting aside scenic landscapes in national parks to

Evans, Promoting Tourism and Development at Crater Lake

This painting of Crater Lake, attributed to southern Oregon artist Grace Russell Fountain, probably dates from the 1890s. This painting helped raise public awareness of the beauty of this natural feature, located far from population centers, and contributed to the movement to conserve Crater Lake for future generations of visitors.

be protected and used for public enjoyment. The nationwide movement at the turn of the twentieth century to conserve and promote culturally significant scenic landscapes that relied on male artists and writers has long been recognized and described.

Recent scholarship has documented numerous ways that women con-tributed to the conservation movement at the turn of the twentieth century. Women campaigned to ban the killing of birds for feathers used in hats, were active members of outdoor hiking clubs, and helped organize and participate in a nationwide campaign to save Niagara Falls from destruction by hydroelectric development in the early 9s. Much is known about the considerable influence women exerted in various conservation crusades through organizations such as the General Federation of Women’s Clubs and its Conservation Committee as well as other clubs that fought to save the Colorado cliff dwellings, preserve the palisades of the Hudson River, prevent the destruction of forests from radical harvesting, and promote

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the beautification of cities. Women’s clubs succeeded in setting aside scenic Franconia Notch in New Hampshire’s White Mountains and creating a reserve that encompassed Mount Katahdin in Maine. Other women worked to establish Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, to protect northern California’s sequoia and redwood trees, and to prevent the flooding and drastic alteration of the Hetch Hetchy Valley of Yosemite National Park in the early 9s. “Propelled by a growing consciousness of the panacea of bucolic scenery and wilderness,” environmental historian Carolyn Merchant has written, “coupled with the need for reform of the squalor of the cities, women burst vividly into the public arena in the early twentieth century as a force in the progressive conservation crusade.”4

Less is known about women’s contributions to the conservation move-ment through their artistic depictions of scenic landscapes. Little attention has been given to exploring the role of women’s artwork in conserving par-ticular scenic places. In Oregon, although scholars have acknowledged that women had a “tremendous impact” on the early development of the state’s art community by participating in art exhibits at state fairs, giving art lessons, and leading art organizations, the influence of women’s landscape art on the conservation movement has not been explored.5

Several challenges have hindered the examination of women’s artistic contributions to the conservation movement. First, simply discovering the work of women artists has been extremely difficult. Both in Great Britain and the United States, “women’s works have not always had the good for-tune to survive . . . into the twentieth century. There has been little impetus for the conservation of women’s paintings, drawings and sculpture, or the acquisition of women’s art by national collections. . . . Gallery-based initiatives . . . have often been fugitive, documented by little more than a photocopied handlist or a slender catalogue.” Although in the Northwest, “women outnumbered men as artists” during this period, “little remains of the work of the impressive numbers of earlier women artists active before 9.”6

The challenge of discovering women’s landscape art has been further compounded by women’s frequent failure to promote their own work and their tendency to leave their work unsigned or signed with monograms, aliases, or their husband’s names. Also, women, perhaps more than men, donated their art to charitable causes or gave it to family members rather than sold it in galleries; thus, the provenance of women’s artwork became lost.7 In an early history of art and artists in Oregon, Louise Rasmussen iden-tified written documentation of only seven women artists alongside more than forty-five men artists.8 A 999 study of Oregon artists described many women who were at work in the late 8s and early 9s, their training,


and subjects painted, yet in-depth research on individual women landscape artists in the Northwest is limited and recent.9

Finally, assessments of the value of women landscape artists’ work have been tempered by commonly held views of women’s inability to travel to plein air (French for ‘open air’) painting locations and their incompe-tence as landscape artists. Women painters of the late-nineteenth-century Victorian era sometimes faced restrictions on traveling alone into remote wilderness areas. They also were confronted with societal assumptions that they lacked the strength, technical knowledge, and training to accurately capture expansive and dynamic western landscapes on canvas. Only men could carry a cumbersome easel, canvases, paints, and brushes to remote sites for plein air painting and capture on canvas scenes characterized by rugged and virile, remote, and untamed landscapes. Well into the twentieth century, judgments about women’s artwork were cast in distinctly gendered terms. The February 27, 926, issue of the Los Angeles Evening Herald, for example, assessed the work of landscape artist Kathryn Leighton’s painting of Glacier National Park this way: “Leighton has a masculine sweep and strength to her brush and few men painters can outdo the virility of her sunbathed peaks and wind-winnowed snowfields.” As recently as 982, an art exhibit booklet that accompanied Yosemite paintings reveals this persistent, narrow view of the value of women’s landscape paintings; only one of the twenty-four artists featured was a woman. “Constance Gordon-Cumming,” wrote catalogue author Joseph Armstrong Baird, Jr., was “that marvelous embodiment of the English Victorian woman-traveler . . . [who] represented the English genteel-amateur with professional aspirations, which was rare in the American West.”

Despite these challenges, researchers have recently shed light on a hand-ful of women landscape artists in the Pacific Northwest. According to art historian Barbara Matilsky, “the genre of landscape painting attracted early women artists in the Northwest. The wilderness as well as natural areas closer to home inspired artists such as Harriet Foster Beecher, Abby Wil-liams Hill, Eliza Barchus, Anna Gellenbeck, and Margaret Camfferman, who were captivated by the coastal and mountain light.” In the early twentieth century, the work of these plein air landscape artists not only popularized notable western landscapes, but also influenced conservation policy makers to support measures aimed at creating, protecting, and promoting public parks. In 94, Barchus recalled for Oregon Daily Journal’s Fred Lockley that she had sold “paintings of Mount Hood or of other scenic beauty spots of the West to President Theodore Roosevelt, President Woodrow Wilson,” and others who could have influenced Congressional decisions about conserva-tion policies. Kathryn Leighton was described, in the February 27, 926, issue

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Grace and Mabel Russell grew up in Ashland, Oregon, where their parents operated the Ashland Marble Works, a marble cutting and carving business. Pictured here are Grace and Mabel with their seven sisters. Standing from left to right are Dotie, Bertha, Nellie, Hortense, and Molly. Seated from left to right are Grace, Mabel, Mattie, and Pearl.

of the Los Angeles Evening Herald, as “the first to bring to galleries here the strange, wild charm of Glacier National Park for an entire exhibit.”2

The conservation movement not only engaged women landscape artists but also encouraged greater acceptance of their work. In the early twentieth century, women landscape artists challenged the Victorian-era pervasive presumption that women artists were amateurs and dilettantes who took up painting as a leisurely Sunday afternoon activity. Although the arts were seen as “proper for a girl’s cultural development,” this had been “peripheral to the essential commercial concerns of society,” such as making a living, “which were handled by men,” according to art historian Vicki Halper.4 This began to change, however, in the late 8s and early 9s, when painting styles that required capturing the authentic qualities of a light on the land-scape encouraged working outdoors, on site. “In the days before the turn

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of the century,” Eliza Barchus’s daughter reflected, “it was not easy being an artist. There were no automobiles to take you to the scenic spots.”5 Women landscape artists of the West needed to transport their easel, paints, brushes, camping gear, and other equipment into often remote locations, where they increasingly moved into men’s painting sphere.

Western railroads also offered to women landscape artists possibilities for professionalization. “Several companies seeking to publicize attractions along their routes in order to stimulate ticket sales began acquiring western landscape . . . paintings either by purchase or by offering artists passage and lodging expenses in exchange for canvases,” according to art historians Phil Kovinick and Marian Yoshiki-Kovinick. The Santa Fe Railroad, in 9, began to collect a large number of paintings of the Grand Canyon, Pike’s Peak, the Arizona desert, and Native American homelands and portraits, many of which were displayed in railroad ticket offices and passenger stations. A decade later, the railroad owned more than thirty-five canvases by women. The Great Northern and the Northern Pacific railroads similarly acquired landscape art created by women. Washington’s Abby Williams Hill made arduous trips into the North Cascades, as well as Yellowstone, to paint en plein air for railroad brochures. Kathryn Leighton made important artistic contributions to the Northern Pacific’s promotion of Glacier National Park.6

In Oregon, Grace Russell Fountain provided the Southern Pacific Railroad with paintings of Crater Lake as early as the turn of the twentieth century.

Opportunities like these took women artists further into the “essential commercial concerns of the society, which were handled by men.”7 In addi-tion to the rigors of plein air painting and the monetary rewards offered by railroads, the professionalization of women artists was advanced by new opportunities in art education programs, feminist activities that emerged alongside the suffrage movement before and during World War I, and the growing number of middle-class women who pursued art as a serious, self-sustaining career. Women artists continually struggled to overcome the “contentious gender politics of the art world” and a “new masculinity in criticism based on biological and Darwinian notions of creativity,” but they succeeded in becoming accepted and recognized artists and professionals.8

The artwork of Grace Russell Fountain (858–942) and Mabel Russell Lowther (874–959) contributed to the promotion and protection of Cra-ter Lake as well as the professionalization of women artists. Their numer-ous images of Crater Lake, painted over several decades and exhibited in Oregon, California, and Washington, D.C., broadened public appreciation for the unique scenic qualities of this shimmering sapphire blue volcanic lake. One of Fountain’s paintings of Crater Lake is said to have influenced President Theodore Roosevelt to sign legislation in 92, establishing Crater

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Lake National Park. Ten years later, a Crater Lake painting by Mabel Russell, exhibited in a U.S. congressional committee meeting encouraged Congress to provide federal funding for the development of roads and trails in the park that boosted tourism. In subtle but real ways, these sisters’ artwork of Crater Lake contributed to the early-twentieth-century conservation movement in Oregon. These two women also pushed at the edges of emerging professional-ism for women landscape artists. They were among an early-twentieth-century group of women landscape artists who moved literally into men’s world of outdoor scenic painting and, through the employment of those paintings by conservation causes, figuratively into the professional world as well.

Grace Russell Fountain and Mabel Russell grew up in Ashland, Oregon, in a family of artistic parents. (This article refers to Mabel Russell without her married surname, because she accomplished the largest body of her artwork before she married in 925.) Their father, James Howard Russell, was born in Tennessee and received instruction in stonecutting and carving in Ohio and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, before immigrating in 849 to the California gold fields. Two years later, he migrated north to the gold-mining camp of Jacksonville in southern Oregon.9 In 854, at age thirty-one, he met and married sixteen-year-old Ann Hasseltine Hill, who had emigrated from the Sweetwater Valley, Tennessee, to southern Oregon with her parents two years earlier. In pursuit of a new business venture, the young couple moved to Yreka, California. Following the failure of that enterprise, they returned to the Rogue River Valley in 86 with a family of three children. That year, James Russell decided to return to stone carving and opened what eventu-ally became the Ashland Marble Works, a business of cutting and carving marble gravestones, monuments, and architectural elements.2

Economic necessity demanded that Ann Russell learn stone-carving skills and develop business acumen. For eighteen months between 86 and 865, when James left his family and the business to explore new gold-mining ventures, Ann “carried on with the marble carving” work.2 When James returned, he and Ann erected a water-powered mill near Ashland Creek close to the center of town. Ann perfected her skill, incising letters and carving flowers and decorative details. The greatest testament to her excellence as a stone carver came when a white-ribbon marble sculpture she completed in 89 won acceptance for exhibition in the Women’s Building of the 89 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. After James died in 895, Ann car-ried on carving and running the family business for many years, nearly until her death in 9 at age ninety-two.22 Several Russell children demonstrated artistic talent as they matured, and two daughters — Grace Russell Foun-tain and younger sister Mabel Russell — not only became adept landscape artists and received recognition for their work but also painted for a living.


Sixteen years apart in age, Fountain and Russell shared with their mother a determination to develop their artistic skill. They never had the resources to enroll in an art school in New York, Paris, Munich, or Dusseldorf, but many years later, Russell recalled that “her mother saw to it that most of her children got art training if they wished it.”2 Late in life, Ann reminisced about remaining committed to the family marble carving business in order to raise money for her children’s education, and the Russells’ marble works business ledger indicates that James and Ann paid for many of their daugh-ters’ education at the Ashland Academy.24

In Ashland’s early years as an emigrant settlement, the Methodist- Episcopal (ME) Church promoted education as an important part of Chris-tian service in the community. The church began collecting funds for a school in 869, and in October of that year, not far from the Russells’ residence, the new two-story wood-frame Ashland Academy building opened its doors as a private school to paying students. Grace Fountain undoubtedly attended the Ashland Academy, probably from 87 to around 878, when she mar-ried at age twenty.25 The Ashland Academy offered some art classes, as in the fall term of 878, when the academy curriculum included painting and

Grace and Mabel Russell’s parents owned a stone carving business in Ashland, Oregon. The marble works, located on North Main Street, is the center building pictured here in an undated photograph.

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drawing classes. She may have taken this class along with other academic courses or business offerings in the academy’s Commercial College. Mabel Russell had a different educational experience. In 878, the heavily mortgaged Ashland Academy floundered, then closed. Ashland High School opened in 89 in the same building. Russell, then sixteen years old, entered high school around that time and graduated in 894.26 By then, she might have been accompanying her older sister Grace on outdoor painting excursions.

Both sisters may also have taken private art lessons from resident or visiting artists. In late August 884, for example, Mrs. M.B. Bowditch, who reportedly had “much experience in art instruction,” offered classes in land-scape painting, both in oil and watercolors. Four years later, the Ashland Tidings reported the arrival of Professor J.M. Fowler, who offered instruc-tion in crayon as well as portrait work at a residence “on Main Street near the Presbyterian Church.”27 Fountain and Russell also could have ventured

This china bowl with flowers is signed on the underside “Grace H. Russell,” indicating that it was completed before Grace married James Fountain in 1878. It is the first known painted item created by Grace Russell Fountain.

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to Portland, by way of the Southern Pacific Railroad, for art and painting lessons. The Rose City offered opportunities to see the work of resident and visiting artists, which were often exhibited in shop windows, and to take art lessons. A recently reported china bowl painted with broad, juicy strokes forming red and yellow flowers among intertwining green leaves is signed “Grace H. Russell” on the underside, strongly suggesting that she was paint-ing by the age of twenty, when she married James Fountain in December 878. Many years later, Mabel Russell recalled that “she took her first real lesson in 894” at age twenty. According to the youngest Russell sister, Pearl Russell Potter Wiley, “both sisters were pupils of [the] well-known western artist, Mr. W.S. Parrott.” Although the precise details of the Russell sisters’ relationship with Parrott is not known, the influence of his artistic style and technique is evident in their early work, and has been observed by several art historians, including Ginny Allen, of Portland.28

After attending the San Francisco Museum of Art, William S. Parrott (84–95) soon became well known in the Pacific Northwest for his skillful depiction of colorful, luminous, representational landscapes painted in the style of the Hudson River School. Founded in the mid nineteenth century by Thomas Cole — and joined later by Asher Durand, Jasper Cropsey, Frederic Edwin Church, Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran, and Thomas Hill — art-ists of the Hudson River School depicted landscapes of stunning beauty along New York’s Hudson River and the Catskills, in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, and in California’s Yosemite Valley and nearby Mariposa Sequoia big trees. Certain aesthetic and philosophical principles, rather than a prescribed style, united artists of the Hudson River School: belief in natural religion; recognition of the beauty, magnificence, and spirituality of nature; and belief that a sparsely inhabited American landscape suggested national character. Hudson River School artists portrayed idealized scenes of iconic landscapes in great realistic detail. They sometimes painted pairs or a series of the same scene, each one capturing changing conditions of light, weather or season, and mood. Light, created by the fleeting effects of sun and moonlight or fire, enraptured many Hudson River School artists, often functioning as a manifestation of the divine. Luminism, a final phase of the Hudson River School, often invoked light and its effects to elevate the ordinary to the sublime.29

Parrott’s landscape paintings epitomized the work of Hudson River School artists. Throughout most of his career, Parrott rendered grand scenic Northwest landscapes in vibrant colors with bold atmospheric luminescence. Like many Hudson River School artists, he painted landscapes on loca-tion outdoors, or en plein air. He specialized in painting luminous scenes of Mount Hood. He also painted scenic landscapes in nearby southwest

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Washington. Beginning in 867, Parrott maintained a studio for twenty years in Portland. He closed his Portland studio permanently around 887 and traveled throughout the region to paint en plein air, exhibit, and sell his artwork. Crater Lake became a favorite, much-painted subject of Par-rott’s, along with Mount Rainier, Mount Adams, Mount St. Helens, Mount Shasta in northern California, Shoshone Falls on the Snake River in Idaho, and blazing, luminous forest fires. He exhibited his paintings in businesses, at several Oregon agricultural fairs, at the Portland Mechanics Fairs (first established in 877–878), and in other venues. Parrott and his sister Eliza-beth Parrott Pond were among the first professional landscape painters in Oregon. Both made their living from selling their artwork.

Fountain and Russell may have first encountered Parrott’s paintings of Mount Hood and other scenic landscapes in Portland. They also could have

William S. Parrot was well known in the Pacific Northwest for his representational paintings of landscapes throughout the region, such as this painting of Crater Lake from 1890–1900. His influence on Grace Russell Fountain and Mabel Russell is evident in their early work.

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seen his paintings of Crater Lake displayed in shop windows in Ashland, at the Ashland summer Chautauqua, or at southern Oregon agricultural fairs, where art was customarily exhibited. Parrott may have given art lessons, demonstrating his painting technique in Ashland or towns nearby. Over time, Parrott’s pupils, including Fountain, Russell, and Eliza Barchus (857–959) of Portland, replicated the Hudson River School style, which featured romantic landscapes bathed in luminous pink and golden atmospheric light as well as details created with small brush strokes. Fountain and Russell could have become acquainted with Parrott in the mid 89s, when he painted Crater Lake after closing his Portland studio.2 Around 894 or 895, Grace Fountain, her husband James, and their youngest child Lysle moved to Klamath Falls, after a depressed national economy and economic woes that had plagued James’s business in Ashland motivated Grace to pursue painting as a pro-fessional self-sustaining career. According to her front-page obituary in the February 9, 942, issue of Yreka’s Siskiyou Daily News, while in Klamath Falls, she studied “under noted landscape painter, a Mr. Parrott.” Fountain’s younger sister, Mabel Russell, probably traveled from Ashland to Klamath Falls to join her on painting excursions to Crater Lake. Many years later, Russell told a Sunday Oregonian journalist that she “took her first real [art] lesson in 894”; given the timing, this lesson may have been with Parrott in Klamath Falls or on the south rim of Crater Lake.4 The sisters often painted at or near Victor Rock, projecting out over the caldera wall.

Fountain completed several paintings of Crater Lake in the 89s, while living in Klamath Falls. In the mid 89s, she reportedly sold her first paint-ing, a view of Crater Lake, to San Francisco Mayor Adolph Sutro (in office from 895 to 897). She also undoubtedly hung paintings of Crater Lake in shops in both Klamath Falls and Ashland.5 Given the landscape’s proximity, she may have selected a Crater Lake painting to exhibit at the First Southern Oregon District Agricultural Fair held in 898 near Medford.6

During the late 8s, Portland, the Pacific Northwest’s largest city with a population of 9,, became increasingly attractive to all three artists — Parrott, Fountain, and Russell. A growing interest among Portland residents in seeing and purchasing artwork was attracting more artists, who came to teach and to exhibit and sell their work at annual agricultural fairs and at the Portland Mechanics Fairs art gallery. The city’s first art club, organized in 885, attracted professionally trained artists from across America and Europe. Around 899, the all-male Portland Art Club evolved into the Port-land Sketch Club, which then opened its doors to women.7

In 9, Portland presented a unique opportunity to artists for another reason: the city was preparing a five-year plan for the first world’s fair on the Pacific Coast — the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition — sched-

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uled to open in June 95. This culturally significant event, celebrating the -year anniversary of the expedition by Meri-wether Lewis and William Clark to the region, provided a great opportunity for rendering the fair’s central theme: natural metropolis. The anticipated .5 million visitors offered promising opportunities for the artist sisters to exhibit scenic land-scape paintings of nearby spectacles, such as Mount Hood and the Columbia River.8

Parrott and Fountain moved to Port-land in the late 89s. Parrott arrived first around 898. Grace, James, and Lysle Fountain came shortly afterwards, around 899 or 9. Grace immediately opened a studio and began giving art lessons in the Marquam Building, while James took a job working as a watchman for the Southern Pacific Railroad.The 9–9 Portland City Directory lists Grace simply as “artist.”9 Mabel Russell occasionally visited her sister and shared her studio.4

Fountain both sought and gained atten-tion for her work. The December 9 issue of The Pacific Coast — Around the World, published by the Pacific Coast Floating Exposition Association, noted that “Mrs. J.D. Fountain, 722 Marquam Building, is a teacher of painting. She makes a specialty of landscape work, her

most notable paintings being a [sic] beautiful canvas of Crater Lake, one of Mount Hood, and a number of Columbia River scenery. Some of the best of our younger artists are among her pupils.” In 9, she extended her advertising to the Polk City Directory. “Mrs. J. D. Fountain, Landscape Artist, 722 Marquam Bldg,” the ad announced.4 In 9, in addition to giv-ing art lessons, she submitted artwork to a committee offering $25 for the best design of an official emblem to be used for the 95 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition. Fifteen contestants, including six women, submitted artwork. On March 8, 9, the Morning Oregonian reported the outcome of the committee’s selection process:

Completed in 1891 on Morrison Street across from Pioneer Square, the Marquam Building was home to an ornate opera house, offices, and stores. Despite its imposing façade, its defective materials caused the east wall to collapse in 1912. The American Bank building replaced it the following year, less than a decade after Grace taught art classes there.

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The best designs are those of Mrs. J. D. Fountain, of Portland, and Leonard Brown of

Tacoma. The design of Mrs. Fountain represents a large apple, such as grows only in the

Northwest, with the outlines of America traced thereon. The apple, clings to its branch,

on which are the words, “Where rolls the Oregon.” Deep-green leaves give the apple a

natural effect. The design is quite unique.

Despite the plaudits, the committee members decided that none of the submissions were just what they wanted.42

A few years after her arrival in Portland, Fountain began developing what would become a long-term relationship with Southern Pacific. This relationship may have begun soon after she moved to Portland around 9. A photograph taken inside an Southern Pacific ticket office in Portland depicts a sizeable painting of Crater Lake that strongly resembles Foun-tain’s painting style hanging on the wall near the ticket counter. Accord-

The inside of the Southern Pacific Railroad ticket office in Portland, pictured here in the early 1900s, featured a sizeable painting of Crater Lake hanging on the rear wall (on the left in this photograph). The painting closely resembles other Crater Lake paintings done by Grace Fountain. Her close association with Southern Pacific at that time suggests the painting might have been hers.

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ing to Fountain’s obituary in the Ashland Tidings, the railroad paid her to complete paintings of iconic western landscapes, such as Crater Lake, over several years.4

Beginning in the 86s, railroads intent on aggressively advertising iconic places to potential tourists brought artists to those places and used their artwork to publicize and promote scenic western landscapes viewable from railroad corridors. Railroad companies became enthusiastic entrepreneurial patrons of artists who painted grand scenery, especially scenic landscapes in places that later became national parks. Art used for promoting travel and tourism in scenic western landscapes dated to the mid 85s, when Thomas Ayres became the first known Euro-American artist to visit and draw the Yosemite Valley. His pencil sketches of pastoral scenes of Yosemite later appeared in James Mason Hutchings’s new Hutchings’ California Magazine, a promotional publication aimed at attracting wealthy tourists and railroad investors.44 When the Union Pacific Railroad constructed its transcontinen-tal line near the Yosemite Valley, it provided free passage in 86 for noted Hudson River School artist Albert Bierstadt as payment for paintings of scenery near its route. His paintings of Yosemite gave eastern audiences the first brilliantly colored views of the valley’s sublime landscape. Bierstadt’s paintings and Carleton Watkin’s stunning mammoth plates and stereo views of Yosemite were sent to a senator from California in Washington, D.C., and made an indelible impression on federal lawmakers as well as President Abraham Lincoln.45 Accounts of Yosemite National Park’s initial preservation, as a grant to the State of California, suggest that Lincoln studied Watkins’s photos before signing the bill that created the park in 864.46

Northern Pacific Railroad financier Jay Cooke & Company brought artist Thomas Moran, photographer William Henry Jackson, and writer Nathaniel P. Langford on an 87 government geological survey expedition to the Yel-lowstone country led by Ferdinand Hayden. The following year, Hayden’s report, accompanied by Moran’s paintings and Jackson’s photographs, as submitted to the U.S. Congress, and in March 872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed legislation creating the 2.2 million acre Yellowstone National Park.47 Later, Jackson wrote that the images he and Moran created during the Hayden survey “‘were the most important exhibits brought before the [Congressional] Committee.’ The ‘wonderful coloring’ of Moran’s sketches made all the difference.’” U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Capt. Hiram M. Chittenden, who worked on the Yellowstone River in the 89s, observed that Moran’s paintings and Jackson’s photographs achieved an outcome that “doubtless convinced everyone who saw them that the regions where such


wonders existed should be preserved to the people forever.” According to art historian and curator Jean Stern, “without the paintings and photographs of the mid-nineteenth century, we would not have our earliest national parks.”48

From an early date, then, the interests and activities of western railroads, artists, and national parks became an intricately interwoven tapestry — one to which the Russell sisters contributed. During the 89s, a “pragmatic alli-ance” between western railroads and national parks became confirmed. The Southern Pacific Railroad, formed from local California railroads owned by the Union Pacific Railroad, not only promoted travel to parks near its rails but also campaigned for the designation of Sequoia and General Grant (now part of Kings Canyon) as national parks. In 89, all those places could be reached from the Southern Pacific Railroad corridor, and the company “became one of the most vigorous sponsors of natural scenery in . . . West Coast national parks.”49 Women, in particular, benefited from the promo-tional efforts of railroad companies to stimulate interest in travel and tourism in western parks, as railroad companies often used their art to sell travel on trains to nature parks. Tacoma artist Abby Williams Hill (86–94) received railroad commissions to paint wilderness scenes along several railroad routes, and in 9, Midwestern artist Bertha Menzler Peyton (87–947) became the first woman to sell her painting of an Arizona landscape to the Santa Fe Railway Company.5 These opportunities expanded women’s possibilities for becoming self-supporting, professional artists.

Undoubtedly, Fountain’s ability to capture on canvas the mesmerizing, shimmering blue shades displayed in Crater Lake appealed to the Southern Pacific Railroad at a time when access to the lake was arduous and few art-ists had reached the top of the crater to paint it. Like the artwork of other railroad artists, her paintings encouraged tourist travel on the railroad and supported the designation of national parks. Fountain, and later, Russell’s many adept renderings of Crater Lake made their work of great interest to both the developing Southern Pacific and the related campaigns to establish and promote a national park embracing Crater Lake.

The creation of Crater Lake National Park experienced a long gestation period. Beginning in the mid 88s, congressional committees considered legislation to withdraw several townships around Crater Lake for a public park. It took several more years, however, and the vision and determination of several individuals, especially mountaineer William G. Steel, to win the public park campaign. After many failed attempts, Oregon Rep. Thomas H. Tongue renewed the effort for park designation in the late 89s. In late 9, he introduced a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives, accompanied by

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a petition signed by 4, individuals. Like previous bills, this one stalled in the House, until Tongue and Steel took up the matter with President Theodore Roosevelt, who supported the Crater Lake park bill.5

During discussions with Roosevelt in early 92, either Tongue or Steel, who were among the most vigorous proponents of forming a national park at Crater Lake, may have presented the president with a large painting of Crater Lake by Grace Fountain in their effort to persuade him to approve of national park legislation. Roosevelt was known to have acquired paintings of national parks, such as one he acquired of Yosemite National Park painted by Harry Cassie Best, a contemporary and friend of Fountain. According to her obituary, Fountain’s painting of Crater Lake presented to Roosevelt “was believed to have been instrumental in his declaring the Lake a National Park.” In late April 92, Crater Lake joined Yosemite, Yellowstone, Sequoia, General, and Mount Rainier as a U.S. National Park.52

Just two years later, the Southern Pacific’s Sunset Magazine hired Fountain to illustrate an article about Crater Lake, written by well-known writer and poet Joaquin Miller, who was also a family friend. In 852, James Fountain and Miller had traveled west over the Oregon Trail in the same wagon train. Both families at first settled in the Willamette Valley, and over the years, the men’s lives periodically crossed and converged.5 Sunset Magazine provided

In 1903, William Steel organized an excursion to Crater Lake. Pictured from left to right are a few of the party’s members, including Phil Matschan, Dr. Edgar P. Hill, Sen. Charles E. Fulton, Joaquin Miller, and William Steel.

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a perfect venue for merging the talents of Miller and Grace Fountain. The Southern Pacific designed Sunset, founded in 898, to increase its ridership and revenue by featuring travel stories and stunning scenery from the rail-road corridor. Full color images of scenes on Southern Pacific passenger routes were liberally spread throughout the magazine.54 Miller had visited Crater Lake in 9 with Steel, the park’s long-time champion. Fountain may have been part of the so-called Steel Excursion. A woman strongly resembling her appears in a 9 photograph taken by Fred and Oscar Kiser of the Steel Excursion dinner stop in Eagle Point, twelve miles north of Medford and on the way to Crater Lake. In the September 94 issue of Sunset, Miller’s passionate description of Crater Lake in “The Sea of Silence” was illustrated with a full-page frontispiece that presented a wide aerial view of the entire lake and crater rim from Mount Scott, the highest point on the rim as well as three other views, all by Fountain.55

Fountain’s continued association with Southern Pacific was evident less than a year later, when a reproduction of one of her Crater Lake paintings, purchased either by the Southern Pacific or its general freight and passenger

Fred and Oskar Kiser took this photograph, titled “Dinner at Eagle Point,” during the so-called “Steel Excursion” in 1903. A woman resembling Grace Russell Fountain is seated on the left side of the table, the last woman facing the camera.

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agent, appeared as a frontispiece opposite the title page in the 95 publica-tion The Souvenir of Western Women. The publication acknowledged that W.E. Coman, general freight and passenger agent for the Southern Pacific’s Oregon line, had loaned the oil painting by Fountain to the publisher.56

Around the same time, Grace, James, and Lysle Fountain left Portland and made their way south to California, stopping to visit family in Ashland and Klamath Falls and to paint Crater Lake and Mount Shasta en plein air.57

Russell, who was actively painting by 94, likely joined her sister on some of these painting excursions.58

During these years, Russell was experiencing her own transition from an artist of local notoriety to one of wider exposure and acclaim. As early as 95, Russell’s artistic skill received acknowledgement when one of her large, strikingly realistic forest fire paintings of “skillful coloring and shade” was exhibited in the Forestry Building at the 95 Lewis and Clark Centen-nial Exposition in Portland. “The painting has been the subject of much flattering comment,” reported the Ashland Tidings that June. Later in life, she became well known for a five-by-six-foot painting of a forest fire that nearly denuded the rim of Crater Lake. Like her mentor William Parrott, Russell painted many forest fire scenes during her career.59

Russell also received high praise for some of her still life paintings. The Southern Pacific Railroad used one for a promotional lecture tour in 94. Southern Pacific employee John Philip Clum, who gave hundreds of lecture tours around the West to promote tourism and passenger ridership, wrote to Russell about the loud applause given when a slide of her flowers was shown at a lecture he gave in San Jose, California. That same year, noted University of Oregon geologist Edwin T. Hodge, who had lectured in Ashland and seen Russell’s painting of Tokay grapes, exclaimed: “I cannot remember . . . ever seeing anything of the kind that seemed as well done — so full of translu-cent, glowing, bottled sunshine.” Soon, Russell’s grape cluster painting was exhibited in Allen H. Eaton’s Eugene art shop, the first book and art store opened in that city. Widely known throughout Oregon for his knowledge of arts, Eaton also curated the Oregon Art Room for the 95 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, where Fountain exhibited a hand-crafted beaded necklace.6

Like her sister, Russell enjoyed painting scenic landscapes en plein air, and Crater Lake remained a favorite subject throughout her life. She made several trips to Crater Lake during most summers to paint, traveling with her mother Ann, her sister Nellie, or with other family members. Occasion-ally, Russell and Fountain went together to paint Crater Lake, and sold their artwork to tourists at the rim. Mabel and Nellie Russell spent much of the summer there in 92, when a party of over fifty American and European


scientists, organized by Harvard geologist Professor William Morris Davis, traveled across the continent and rode in thirty-one automobiles to the rim.6

During the 9s and early 92s, Russell widely exhibited paintings, and her talent for painting Crater Lake and other landscape scenes became well known by private collectors. Numerous prominent Ashland and Rogue Val-ley residents purchased her paintings.62 In 98, she sold six snow scenes of Crater Lake to Phoebe Hearst of San Francisco, wife of a U.S. Senator, mother of influential newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, and major philanthropist and supporter of women’s education, cultural pursuits, and professionalism. Texas sheep rancher Robert Prosser, who lived in Los Altos, California, in the early 92s, purchased one of her forest fire paintings.6

Russell’s increased artistic recognition coincided with momentous unfolding developments in travel, tourism, and national parks. Increasingly, wealthy tourists and railroad investors were replaced by a growing number of middle-class passengers interested in traveling west simply for a vacation and not for lengthy grand tours. In the early 9s, the assembly-line mass production of automobiles made cars affordable, and independent travel possible for the expanding middle class. Although railroads could bring visitors near grand scenery in national parks, they often were unable to deliver tourists to the most compelling scenery, so they increasingly worked to blend their passenger service with automobile transport. By the early 9s, the Southern Pacific Railroad had completed an extension north of Klamath Falls that brought travelers within six miles of the park boundary.

The Southern Pacific also created illustrated brochures with detailed infor-mation about round-trip transportation to the rim in “auto stages” from that new freight and passenger depot at Kirk as well as one in Medford, on the west side of Crater Lake.64

Crater Lake National Park promoters and managers also strongly encour-aged the development of the park by improving existing primitive roads and building new ones, thus making the lake itself more accessible to tourists. The park’s success relied on increased visitation, which justified appeals to Congress for development appropriations.

The emphasis on travel, recreational tourism, and transportation devel-opments in Crater Lake National Park presented new artistic opportunities for Russell. In 92, she sent one of her Crater Lake paintings to Oregon Rep. Willis C. Hawley to exhibit at a subcommittee hearing, when he would plead for additional congressional funding for road and bridge construction in the park. On June 4, Hawley presented arguments for amending an earlier appropriations bill then being considered in subcommittee to include funds for “the construction of a wagon road and necessary bridges through the

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Crater Lake National Park.”65 In an effort to emphasize the importance of his request for road funding, Hawley then pointed to Russell’s painting that exhibited “the western portion of the lake, and is an excellent representa-tion of the lake and the western rim.” Congress subsequently approved, on August 24, 92, an appropriation of $5, for the “construction of a wagon road and necessary bridges through Crater Lake National Park” to build a permanent, 6.5-mile road from the eastern park boundary along Wheeler Creek and Sand Creek to Kerr Notch and also to complete the re-grading of another section of nearby existing road.66

Russell’s development as an artist gained additional momentum, just as events leading to the establishment of the National Park Service (NPS) accelerated. During the 9s, a movement supported by private citizens and influential government leaders to manage collectively all the existing national parks, then operated independently, gained momentum. Images of existing and proposed park landscapes played a key role in promoting the establish-ment of a national park bureau. In 96, as Congress contemplated national park legislation, the Department of the Interior, in an effort to promote pas-sage of the national park bureau bill, published and distributed the National Parks Portfolio, with abundantly illustrated chapters on eight national parks. Numerous large, black-and-white images by Portland photographer Fred Kiser filled the pages of the Crater Lake chapter.In 9, Fred Kiser and his brother Oscar opened a photographic business in Warrendale, Fred began to develop a long-term relationship with Crater Lake and its promoter Wil-liam Steel. This continued for many years. In 94, Kiser had invited Russell to paint scenes of Crater Lake for his company, and in the late summer of 94, she spent a month painting Crater Lake, before heading south to also paint Mount Shasta for Kiser. Around the same time, Russell also took up photography, perhaps as inspiration for her painting or simply as its own art form. Russell and Kiser’s images of the landscape undoubtedly encour-aged tourism at Crater Lake.67

Russell’s artwork was used to encourage tourism in a different way. When Steel came to Grants Pass in February 96 to give a presentation on the need for park developments aimed at attracting more visitors to the lake, several of Russell’s paintings and photographs, taken when she was snow-bound at the lake, were exhibited at the town’s Guild Hall.68 The national park bureau campaign was won in August 96, when Congress passed and President Woodrow Wilson signed legislation articulating the federal agency’s fundamental purpose: “to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects” and to “provide for the enjoyment” of that scenery and those objects while leaving parks unimpaired and in their natural condition. Stephen Mather, a Chicago businessman who had joined the campaign and


This map of Crater Lake illustrated the National Park Service’s 1917 publication, General Information Regarding Crater Lake National Park, Season of 97. The dashed line around the north and east sides of the crater indicate portions of the rim road under construction. Crater Lake Lodge provided gasoline for automobiles, a store, boats, fishing tackle, and riding horses to attract tourists.

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was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Department of Interior in 95, was appointed the bureau’s first director.69

Artistic images created by the Fountain and Russell continued to play a role in preserving and promoting national parks. Five months after pas-

sage of the National Park Service (NPS) legisla-tion, Mather hosted the fourth National Parks Conference in Washing-ton, D.C. The earlier con-ferences had been held at Yellowstone (9), Yosemite (92), and on the Berkeley campus of the University of Cali-fornia (95) to address the urgent administrative needs of America’s exist-ing national parks. The 97 conference convened with a number of high-profile conservation-minded park supporters. Acknowledgement of the role of the visual arts was everywhere evident. One presentation, “The Painter and the National Parks,” was given by the Smithsonian’s head cura-tor, William H. Holmes, who critiqued the impact of work by the more nota-ble artists, particularly Thomas Moran’s paint-ings of Yellowstone, on

setting aside portions of this “wonderful land as a national park.”7

Featured at the conference was an art exhibition in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum, which displayed forty-five paintings of vari-ous national parks by twenty-seven of the best known landscape artists in America, including Moran, Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Hill, and Sidney Lau-

After leaving Oregon about twenty years earlier, Grace Fountain was featured in the March 1, 1926, issue of the Oakland Tribune. Approaching age seventy, Fountain’s new studio in the east Oakland Hights artists’ neighborhood, near the home of her long-time friend Joaquin Miller, suggests her continued engagement in painting.


rence. One of Fountain’s paintings of Crater Lake, purchased earlier by the Southern Pacific Railroad, appeared alongside them. In this “First Exhibition of National Parks Paintings” list of exhibitors, her name appeared as “J.R. Fountain,” instead of “G.R. Fountain,” as she often signed her paintings.7

Of the twenty-seven participants, she was the only woman. The National Park Service continued to make periodic use of Fountain’s

artwork for several more years. In the May 924 issue of the popular World’s Work magazine, for example, an article by NPS Director Stephen Mather entitled “What I Am Trying to Do with the National Parks” included an image of Crater Lake and Wizard Island painted by Fountain. The article also included the artwork of Gunnar Widforss, Judge R.H. Tallant, and Carl Borg, who depicted other national parks.72

By that time, Fountain was ensconced in the cultural enclave that had emerged in Oakland after the 96 earthquake and fire in San Francisco destroyed so many artists’ studios and artwork. The Fountain family moved first to Miller’s stony acres in the barren, sun-parched, and wind-swept Contra Costa hills of East Oakland, and then to a house and studio nearby.7 Over time, a constellation of simple rustic buildings emerged as Miller’s utopian colony of creative writers and artists, who shared his belief in divinity, the immortality of the soul, the kinship of humanity, and the love of beauty.74 Fountain’s studio, as well as the nearby home of inventor and plate-maker George Clark, became gathering places for several Bay Area artists, most of whom specialized in painting mountains and iconic landscapes, such as Mount Shasta, Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon. At that time, according to San Francisco art dealer Lorenz Noll: “As they were all artists, painters, and sculptors and had much in common, they fraternized, and gathered at [George] Clark’s home for drinks, after an afternoon at Grace’s studio. . . . Grace and Joaquin used to go on painting trips together. She was a noted mountain painter.”75

Fountain continued to make occasional sojourns to southern Oregon and northern California to visit family members and to paint Crater Lake and Mount Shasta with her sister Mabel. Together, the two sisters also painted dramatic images of Mount Shasta from vantage points near Russell’s 6-acre ranch-homestead in Mayten, near Montague, California. For ten years (95–925), Russell’s property served as a seasonal studio, which Fountain occasionally visited. Late in her painting career, Fountain painted huge imaginative images of Mount Shasta and the Grand Canyon. Russell likewise painted a particularly impressive four-by-six-foot canvas of a sunrise view of Mount Shasta, for which she became well-known.76

As Fountain aged, her choice of subjects vastly expanded beyond Crater Lake and her artistic style moved increasingly away from realistic

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representational renderings toward more abstract paintings, created with loose, choppy brush strokes of light, bright colors characteristic of Cali-fornia Impressionism. The two sisters continued to share their delight and absorption with artistic expression into their seventies and early eighties. In December 94, Russell traveled to Oakland to be with her sister, who had become ill with the flu and suffered a stroke. Russell was by her sister’s side when Grace Fountain passed away at age eighty-four in her home in Oakland on February 8, 942.77

Mabel Russell Lowther carried on painting landscapes, and also pursu-ing photography, during the 94s and 95s. After her husband, Newton Lowther, died in 97, Mabel moved back to the Russell family home in Ashland around 94. In 944, one of Russell’s many large canvases of Crater Lake was presented to the University of Oregon’s Department of Geology and Geography by its head, Warren D. Smith. According to the Eugene Register Guard, “the picture, which reproduces the real colors of the lake with unusual faithfulness, was painted by Mrs. Mabel Russell Lowther of Ashland. . . . With an artist from San Francisco, she spent many months working out the exact colors.”78 In 25, this eight-foot-square painting, carefully restored and cleaned, still hangs in the Department of Geology, where it constantly reminds faculty, staff, students, and visitors of the unique features that are celebrated in Oregon’s only national park. The “artist from San Francisco” mentioned in the Register Guard article was most likely Fountain.

The Russell family home in Ashland, Oregon, is pictured here in about 1919. Mabel Russell moved back to the house around 1940, after her husband’s death.

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Mabel Russell Lowther painted this view of Crater Lake. Warren D. Smith, then chair of the combined Department of Geology and Geography at the University of Oregon, presented the painting to the department in 1944. It currently hangs in the Geology Department’s conference room, cleaned and refurbished.

As family members aged and died, Russell sometimes traveled from Ashland to Portland to spend time with an older sister, Theodosia Russell Walters. In April 947, when in Portland, she told an Oregonian journalist that the burned, barren rim of Crater Lake many years ago had inspired her to paint a blazing forest fire on the rim, lit from behind, and that its realism provoked the Forest Service to use it many times in fire-prevention displays. Once again, Mabel Russell contributed to the nature conservation movement. Twelve years after that interview, she died on April 2, 959, at age eighty-four.79

During their lifetimes, the artwork of Grace Russell Fountain and Mable Russell Lowther made their names almost synonymous with Crater Lake. Not only were their paintings publicly displayed throughout Oregon in homes,

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shop windows, and at public events, they were also used by the Southern Pacific Railroad and the National Park Service in promotional literature that advocated travel, recreational tourism, and development. The Russell sisters’ artistry both shaped public perceptions of Crater Lake and played an important visual role in promoting the scenic beauty of Crater Lake and its designation as a national park and, early on, in adding weight to congres-sional arguments to fund the development of park roads and comfortable accommodations for Americans touring the West in automobiles.

At the time of the Russell sisters’ deaths, however, many of their paintings had already become forgotten or lost. Russell family members and friends, along with a small number of galleries and collectors, knew of their work, but the passage of time and limited records of their art pushed it and its significance into the dim distance. A close examination of the Russell sisters’ paintings and photographs adds to our understanding of how the artwork of women has contributed to the preservation of Crater Lake as well as its early promotion and development as a national park that needed to attract tourists. The two Russell sisters not only influenced both the protection of Crater Lake and its use by tourists one hundred years ago, but their artwork also represents the growing recognition that women artists who worked hard to perfect their skill could become imaginative, accomplished, and self-supporting professionals. The early-twentieth-century era of the progressive conservation movement offered women as well as men an opportunity not only to contribute to environmental protection in North America, but also to expand their artistic capabilities and become serious professional artists. Our exposure to the lives and work of Grace Russell Fountain and Mabel Russell Lowther contributes in a small way to our understanding of environmental history and the development of women in the arts in early-twentieth-century Oregon.

NOTES

Many people have contributed to this article in myriad ways, particularly Ashland resi-dent, public history colleague, and long-time friend Kay Atwood, who passed away in May 24; Grace Fountain patron Judson Parsons; Portland gallery owner Mark Humpal; and Mabel Russell art informant and supporter,

University of Oregon emeritus professor of geology Dana Johnston. This article is dedicated to southern Oregon historian Kay Atwood.

. Robert A. Winfree, “The Nature of Art: Communicating Park Science, Nature and Culture through Art,” Alaska Park Science :


2 (2), 2, http://www.nps.gov/articles/aps-v-i2-c.htm on (accessed April , 25). See also Finis Dunaway, Natural Visions: The Power of Images in American Environmental Reform (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 25).

2. Dwight Pitcaithley, “Philosophical Underpinnings of the National Park Idea” (np: Association of National Park Rangers, 2), online at http://www.cr.nps.gov/his-tory/hisnps/NPSThinking/underpinnings.htm (accessed April , 25); “George Catlin and the Dream of the National Parks” (New York: ArtsEdge, Kennedy Center, Harlem, no date), http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/~/media/ArtsEdge/LessonPrintables/grade-6-8/discovering_national_george_cat-lin.ashx (accessed April 6, 25).

. Kate Nearpass Ogden, “Sublime Vistas and Scenic Backdrops: Nineteenth-Century Painters and Photographers at Yosemite,” California History (Summer 99): 4. See also Amy Scott, ed., Yosemite: Art of an Ameri-can Icon (Berkeley: University of Berkeley Press, 26).

4. Carolyn Merchant, Earthcare: Women and the Environment (New York: Routledge, 996), . See also Marsha Weisiger, “Toward a Gendered Environmental History,” Encyclo-pedia of American Environmental History, Vol. 1, ed. Kathleen A. Brosnan (New York: Facts On File, 2), 5; Virginia J. Scharff, ed., Seeing Nature Through Gender (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2); Susan R. Schrepfer, Nature’s Atlas: Mountains, Gender, and American Environmentalism (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 25);.Gail E. Ev-ans, Storm over Niagara (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, 992); and William H. Wilson, The City Beautiful Movement (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 994).

5. Women artists played leadership roles in the creation of the Portland Sketch Club and the Oregon Art Association (both in 895) as well as the early Portland Art Mu-seum and Museum Art School. J.D. Cleaver, “Introduction,” in Allen and Klevit, Oregon Painters: The First Hundred Years (1859–1959),

6; Vicki Halper, “Northwestern Exposure,” in Independent Spirits: Women Painters of the American West, 1890–1945, ed. Patricia Trenton (Berkeley: University of California Press and the Autry Museum of Western Heritage, 995), 7–8.

6. Deborah Cherry, Painting Women: Victorian Women Artists (London: Routledge, 99), ; Patricia Trenton, ed., “Preface and Acknowledgements,” in Independent Spirits; Halper, “Northwestern Exposure,” x, 8.

7. Phil Kovinick and Marian Yoshiki-Kovinick, “Western Women Artists,” South-west Art 26: 6 (November 98). See also Phil Kovinick and Marian Yoshiki-Kovinick, An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West: A Biographical Dictionary (Austin: Uni-versity of Texas Press, 998), online at http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/6aa/6aa8.htm (accessed March , 25).

8. Louise Rasmussen, “Art and Artists in Oregon, 5–9,” chapter , available at University of Oregon library, Eugene. An example of the challenges of names is documented by Rasmussen, who found that newspapers and magazines gener-ally refer to women artists as “Mrs. Eliza R. Barchus,” “Mrs. Fountain,” “Mrs. Annabelle Hutchinson-Parrish,” “Mrs. George Small,” and “Mrs. H.H. Spaulding.”

9. Ginny Allen and Jody Klevit briefly de-scribed around twenty women artists paint-ing between the 88s and 92s, primarily based in the greater Portland and Willamette Valley area. Allen and Klevit, Oregon Paint-ers, 99–29. See also Agnes Barchus, Eliza R. Barchus: The Oregon Artist: 1857–1959 (Port-land: Binford & Mort, 974); Ronald Fields, Abby Williams Hill and the Lure of the West (Tacoma, Wash.: State Historical Society, 989); Barbara C. Matilsky, Show of Hands: Northwest Women Artists 1880–2010 (Bell-ingham, Wash.: Whatcom Museum, 2); Doris Shadbolt, Emily Carr (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 99); Kate Braid, Emily Carr: Rebel Artist (Toronto: XYZ Editeur, 2); and Kovinick and Yoshiki-Kovinick, ”Western Women Artists, An Overview”

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online at http://www,tfaoi.com/aa/6aa8aa.htm (accessed July , 25).

. Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein, Ameri-can Women Artists from Early Indian Times to the Present (Boston: G.K. Hall & Company, 982), 58; Trenton, Independent Spirits, ix; Kovinick and Yoshiki-Kovinick, “Western Women Artists”; Kovinick and Yoshiki-Kovinick, An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West: A Biographical Dictionary.

. See Trenton, Independent Spirits, 58; Joseph Armstrong Baird, Jr., Views of Yosem-ite: The Last Stance of the Romantic Landscape (Fresno: Fresno Arts Center, 982), 7.

2. Matilsky, Show of Hands, 7; Rasmus-sen, Art and Artists in Oregon; “Mrs. Eliza R. Barchus, Fred Lockley, Impressions and Observations of the Journal Man,” Oregon Daily Journal, May 4, 94; Patricia Trenton, “Islands on the Land: Women Traditional-ists of Southern California” Independent Spirits, 58.

. Kirsten Swinth, Painting Profession-als: Women Artists and the Development of Modern American Art, 1870–1930 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2), 24.

4. Halper, “Northwestern Exposure,” 7.5. Barchus, Eliza R. Barchus, 2.6. Kovinick and Yoshiki-Kovinick,

“Western Women Artists, An Overview” online at http://www,tfaoi.com/aa/6aa8aa.htm (accessed July , 25).

7. Halper, “Northwestern Exposure,” 7.

8. Swinth, Painting Professionals, –5; Rubinstein, American Women Artists, 9–9, 9, 58; Gail Levin, “The Changing Status of American Women Artists, 9–9,” in American Women Artists, 1830–1930 (Wash-ington, D.C.: The National Museum of Women in the Arts, 987), –6.

9. “Died in Ashland, Oct , 895,” Ash-land Tidings, October , 895, in Lida Childers and Ruby Lacy, “Ashland Tidings Newspaper Abstracts,” 99; “Lucia Faxon Additon, A Woman Marble-Cutter,” c. 92, vertical file: Russell, Ann Hill, Southern Oregon His-torical Society, Medford, Oregon [hereafter

SOHS]; Ashley Howard Russell, letter to Nan Hannon, c. 988, vertical file: Russell, Ann Hill, SOHS. See also Kay Atwood, “James H. Russell (JHR) and Ann Hill Russell (AHR): A Biographical and Professional Chronology,” prepared for Elisabeth Potter, January 2.

2. Nan Hannon, “The Hill Family of Ashland,” The Table Rock Sentinel (newslet-ter of the Southern Oregon Historical Soci-ety), August 985, –8; Additon, “A Woman Marble-Cutter,” c. 92; “Valley Pioneer Women, Ripe in Years, But Hearts Young,” Medford Mail Tribune, 928, vertical file: Russell, Ann Hill, SOHS; “Died in Ashland, October , 895,” Ashland Tidings, October , 895; Atwood, “James H. Russell (JHR) and Ann Hill Russell (AHR),” 9.

2. Fred Lockley, “Observations and Impressions of the Journal Man,” Oregon Journal, July 9, 922; Atwood, “James H. Rus-sell (JHR) and Ann Hill Russell (AHR),” 9.

22. Additon, “A Woman Marble-Cutter,” c. 92; “Ann Haseltine [sic] Hill Russell,” Find a Grave, at: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=9948 ( ac-cessed November 9, 24); “Died in Ashland, October , 895,” Ashland Tidings, October , 895; Atwood, “James H. Russell (JHR) and Ann Hill Russell (AHR),” January 2.

2. Ann Sullivan, “Oregon Family In-teresting for Art and Long Living,” Sunday Oregonian, April 2, 947, p. 29.

24. Kay Atwood, email communication with Gail Evans, January 7, 2; Atwood, “James H. Russell (JHR) and Ann Hill Russell (AHR),” January 2, .

25. Arthur S. Taylor, “Background of SOC,” Souvenir History of Southern Oregon College, 1872–1955 (Ashland: Southern Or-egon College, 955), –; Larry Wait, “The Beginning of Southern Oregon College,” History of the Pacific Northwest, History Research Paper, May 29, 959; both located in University Archives, Hannon Library, Southern Oregon University, Ashland.

26. “Ashland Academy,” Ashland Tid-ings, August 2, 878; “Ashland College,” Ashland Tidings, July 25, 879; “The Ashland Academy,” Ashland Tidings, November 29,


878; Taylor, “Background of SOC,” 2; A.L. Beck, “Milestones in the History of South-ern Oregon College,” typescript, University Archives, Hannon Library, Southern Oregon University; “Where Alumni are Located,” Ashland Daily Tidings, June 5, 9.

27. These classes were offered at rooms in the “Woolen house.” Personal items, Ashland Tidings, August 29, 884; “Art Instruction,” Ashland Tidings, November 6, 888.

28. Mark Humpal, Mark Humpal Fine Art Gallery, Portland, Oregon, email to Gail Evans, August 22, 24; Ann Sullivan, “Oregon Family Interesting for Art and Long Living,” Sunday Oregonian, April 2, 947, p. 29; Pearl Russell Potter Wiley, letter to Franz Stenzel, January 9, 965, Main File: “Fichet-Frenzeny,” Franz R. and Kathryn M. Stenzel Research Files on Western American Art, Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts, Yale University; Allen and Klevit, Oregon Painters, 58.

29. Judith Hansen O’Toole, Different Views in Hudson River School Painting (New York: Columbia University Press in association with Westmoreland Museum of American Art, 25), –2,5–8; François-Marc Gagnon, “The Forest, Niagara and the Sublime,” in Expanding Horizons: Painting and Photography of American and Canadian Landscape, 1860–1918, ed. Hilliard T. Goldfarb (Montreal: Montreal Museum of Fine Art, 29), –88; Alfred C. Harrison, Jr., “Fertile Ground: California Landscape Painting from 87–9,” in California Impressions: Land-scapes from the Wendy Willrich Collection, ed. Timothy Anglin Burgard and Alfred C. Har-rison, Jr. (San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 26), 24–25, ; and “Ro-manticism,” Ask/Art: The Artists’ Bluebook, on line at: www.askart.com/AskART/inter-est/base_essay.aspx?id=96&gloss (accessed March , 25).

. Kitty Harmon, ed., The Pacific North-west Landscape: A Painted History (Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 2), 9; Allen and Klevit, Oregon Painters, 25; Humpal, email to Evans, August 22, 24. A well-known painting by Parrott of Mount Hood was exhibited at Portland Mechanic’s Institute art gallery in

879. William H. Gerdts, Art Across America: Two Centuries of Regional Painting, 1710–1920, vol. 3 (New York: Abbeville Press, 99), 86.

. Barchus, Eliza R. Barchus; and Ann Sullivan, “Oregon’s Woman Artist Turns Century,” Oregonian, December 5, 957. Mark Humpal has posited that Grace Fountain went through two stages of development as an artist before moving to California, where she developed in the third period. During the first period, up to the mid 89s, Grace’s work strongly mirrored the work of William Parrott in its tight small brush strokes and overall realistic style. Her second period, from the late 89s to around 95, exhibits the influence of the Hudson River School. Humpal, interview by Gail Evans-Hatch, November 24, 22, at Humpal Gallery, Portland, Oregon.

2. Braarud Fine Art owns a William Par-rott painting of Crater Lake that places him in the area during the mid 89s. Travel from Klamath Falls to Crater Lake in the 89s of-fered the shortest of the three existing routes to the caldera. Rick Harmon, Crater Lake National Park: A History (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 22), 72–78.

. Grace married James Davis Foun-tain, fifteen years her senior, on December , 878. In 879, Grace bore a son, Claude Russell Fountain, and in 884 gave birth to a daughter, Lysle Fountain. U.S. Census, 88; Census Records, Jackson County, Typescript, Vertical File: “Fountain — Biog,” SOHS; Linda Kracke, researcher, “Descendants of Matthew Fountain,” January 4, 27, http://www.museum.bmi.net/Pat%2Smith/Foun-tain,%2sarah.htm (accessed July 2, 25). On the millinery business managed by Grace, see “New Firm,” Ashland Tidings, March 26, 879; and “Millinery Opening,” Ashland Tid-ings, November 7, 884; on business troubles, see Ashland Tidings, November 9, 888.

4. “Yreka Artist Succumbs at Age of 84: Grace Russell Fountain is Mourned,” Siskiyou Daily News, February 9, 942; Ann Sullivan, “Oregon Family Interesting for Art and Long Living,” Sunday Oregonian, April 2, 947, p. 29.

4 OHQ vol. 116, no. 3

5. “Woman, 7, Joins Hights Art Col-ony,” Oakland Tribune, March , 926, p. 7.

6. Allen and Klevit, Oregon Painters, 58. Crater Lake paintings attributed to or signed by Fountain include: a 46" x " painting owned by a Salem resident; a 48" x 24" painting purchased by a Portland realtor from Humpal Fine Art Gallery in Portland; a 26" x 2" oil owned by a Medford resident, and a paint-ing now in the Klamath County Museum in Klamath Falls. In 2, Gail Evans assembled a list of all known artwork by Grace Russell Fountain in a report entitled “Grace Russell Fountain: Her Life and Art, 858–942.”

7. Allen and Klevit, Oregon Painters, –7; “Population of the Largest Urban Places: 89,” http://www.census.gov/popula-tion/www/documentation/twps27/tab2.txt (accessed July 2, 25).

8. Gerdts, Art Across America, 86–9; Patrick A. Forster, “‘Art Feeling Grows’ in Oregon: The Portland Art Association, 892–92 (M.A. thesis, Portland State University, 2). For more on Lewis and Clark, see Carl Abbott, “The Booster City and Business Leaders,” The Oregon History Project, http://www.oregonhistoryproject.org/narratives/lewis-and-clark-from-expedition-to-exposi-tion-8-95/starting-a-new-century-the-lewis-and-clark-centennial-exposition-95/the-booster-city-and-business-leaders/#.Va674fnsdKl (accessed July 2, 25); and Abbott, “Lewis and Clark Exposition,” The Oregon Encyclopedia, http://oregonencyclo-pedia.org/articles/lewis_clark_exposition (accessed August 4, 25).

9. Polk’s Portland City Directory (Port-land, R.L. Polk & Company, 898, 899, 9, 9–92, 92, 9, and 96), studio ad-vertisements in 92 and 9.

4. Allen and Klevit, Oregon Painters, 58.4. The Pacific Coast — Around the

World : (Portland: Pacific Coast Floating Exposition Association, 9): 22; R.L. Polk & Company, City Directory, Portland (Portland, R. L. Polk, 9), 868.

42. “No Design Wins Prize,” Morning Or-egonian, March 8, 9. “Where rolls the Or-egon” is from the much-quoted nineteenth-

century verse, ‘Where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound,’ in William Cullen Bryant’s Thanatopsis. The “Oregon” in this verse refers to the Columbia River. Several months later, artist Ralph Beck of Buffalo, New York, won a $5 prize for his illustration of the female figure of Columbia leading Lewis and Clark westward, suggesting “discovery, exploration, and westward progress” as the themes for the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition. “The Lewis and Clark Exposition,” Pacific Monthly : (January 94), 4–5.

4. “Local Pioneer Woman Passes,” Ashland Daily Tidings, February 9, 942, p. 6.

44. Thomas Ayres, “A Trip to the Yo-hamite Valley,” Daily Alta California, August 6, 856.

45. Naef in collaboration with Wood, Era of Exploration, ; Ogden, “Sublime Vistas and Scenic Backdrops,” 9; Mrs. H.J. Taylor, “Early Artists in Yosemite,” Yosemite Indians and Other Sketches, 96, http://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/yosemite_in-dians_and_other_sketches/early_artists.html (accessed April 5, 25); Rolf Diamant, “Lincoln, Olmsted, and Yosemite: Time for a Closer Look,” The George Wright Forum : (24), .

46. Ogden, “Sublime Vistas and Scenic Backdrops,” 8–9; Taylor, “Early Artists in Yosemite.”

47. Ferdinand Hayden, Preliminary Report of the United States Geological Survey of Montana and Portions of Adjacent Ter-ritories (Washington, D.C.: Secretary of the Interior, 872); Winfree, “The Nature of Art: Communicating Park Science, Nature and Culture through Art,” , http://www.nps.gov/articles/aps-v-i2-c.htm (accessed April , 25). The Yellowstone National Park Protection Act established the park in 872. See “Yellowstone National Park Protection Act (872), http://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/management/yellowstoneprotectionact872.htm (accessed July 2, 25).

48. Chittenden quoted in “Moran the Lobbyist,” http://www.nps.gov/museum/ex-hibits/moran/yellow5.htm (accessed March 29, 25); Jean Stern, “Art and the National


Parks,” Art of the National Parks: Historic Connections, Contemporary Interpretations (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press and Fresco Fine Art Publications, 9), 9. The artwork of many other painters and photographers has also contributed to the establishment of particular national parks. See, for example, Fred Beckey, Mount McKin-ley: Icy Crown of North America (Seattle: The Mountaineers, 99), –.

49. Alfred Runte, “Pragmatic Alliance, Western Railroads and the National Parks,” National Parks 48:4 (April 974): 4–6.

5. Ronald Fields, Abby Williams Hill and the Lure of the West (Tacoma: Wash. State Historical Society, 989), 4, 8, ; Phil Kovinick, Woman Artist in the American West, 1860–1960 (Fullerton, Calif.: Muckenthaler Cultural Center, 976), 26–7; Kovinick and Yoshiki-Kovinick, An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West, xix; Halper, “Northwestern Exposure,” 9–.

5. Harlan D. Unrau and Stephen Mark, Crater Lake National Park: An Administrative History (no publishing city: National Park Service, 987), online at http://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/crla/adhi/chap4.htm (accessed April , 25); Harmon, Crater Lake National Park, 54–7, 78–8; J. Michael McCloskey, Conserving Oregon’s Environ-ment: Breakthroughs That Made History (Portland, Ore.: Inkwater Press, 2), 7–9.

52. “Harry Cassie Best, 86–96,” Bodega Bay Heritage Gallery, http://www.bodegabayheritagegallery.com/Best_Harry_Cassie.htm ( accessed April 6, 25); “Yreka Artist Succumbs at Age 84: Grace Russell Fountain is Mourned,” Siskiyou Daily News, February 9, 942; see also, “Painting Will Help,” Ashland Tidings, June 7, 92; Unrau and Mark, Crater Lake National Park, http://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/crla/adhi/chap4.htm (accessed April , 25); Harmon, Crater Lake National Park, 54–7, 78–8.

5. Eva Emery Dye, “Oregon Writers,” The Pacific Monthly 4:6 (October 9): 25; “Joaquin Miller’s Boyhood Pal Dies,” Oakland Tribune, September , 926; A His-

tory of Southern Oregon, Comprising Jackson, Josephine, Douglas, Curry and Coos Coun-ties (Portland: A.G. Walling, 884); Phoebe Cutler, “Joaquin Miller and the Social Circle at the Hights,” California History 9 (22): 4–42.

54. Alfred Runte, “Promoting the Golden West: Advertising and the Railroad,” Califor-nia History (Spring 99): 74. Alfred Runte, “Pragmatic Alliance: Western Railroads and the National Parks,” National Parks: The En-vironmental Journal 48:4 (April 974): 4–2; Richard J. Orsi, Sunset Limited: The Southern Pacific Railroad and the Development of the American West, 1850–1930 (Berkeley: Univer-sity of California Press, 25).

55. Joaquin Miller, “The Sea of Silence,” Sunset Magazine :5 (September 94): 94–44; Kovinick and Yoshiki-Kovinick, An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West, 98.

56. Mary Osborn Douthit, ed., The Souvenir of Western Women (Portland, Ore.: Anderson & Duniway Company Press, 95).

57. Polk’s Portland City Directory (Port-land: R.L. Polk & Company, 94 and 95) shows no Fountains living in Portland. Confirming this is a 94 publication, Portrait and Biographical Record of Western Oregon, Containing Original Sketches of Many Well Known Citizens of the Past and Present . . . (Chicago, Chapman Publishing Company, 94), 948, online at https://ar-chive.org/details/portraitbiographwoinc-hap (accessed April , 25), which notes that Grace Fountain, the artist, was living in Portland in 94. In 95, James is noted as a “miner” in Shasta City, suggesting that Fountain probably left Portland by 95 and joined her husband in Shasta City, northern California. Mount Shasta was a favorite subject for both women to paint.

58. See Portrait and Biographical Record of Western Oregon, which notes that Mabel was “an artist residing in Ashland.”

59. “Ashland Artist’s Work,” Ashland Tidings, June 29, 95; “A Beautiful ‘Forest Fire’,” Ashland Tidings, March 6, 95; Sul-livan, “Oregon Family Interesting for Art and

42 OHQ vol. 116, no. 3

Long Living,” April 2, 947; Ashland Tidings, February 24, 9.

6. “Second Banquet Big Success,” Ashland Tidings, February 2, 94; “Local Artist Is Recognized Abroad,” Ashland Tid-ings, March 6, 94; “Local Artist Is Rec-ognized Abroad,” Ashland Tidings, March 6, 94; “Allen Eaton, folk arts champion,” Doris Ulmann Collection, University of Oregon Libraries, https://library.uoregon.edu/speccoll/photo/ulmann/eaton.html (accessed November , 24). See also David B. Van Dommelen, Allen H. Eaton: Dean of American Crafts (Pittsburgh: Local History Company, 24); “The People: Allen Ea-ton,” Craft Revival: Shaping Western North Caroline Past and Present, http://www.wcu.edu/library/DigitalCollections/CraftRevival/people/alleneaton.html (accessed July 2, 25); Allen Hendershott Eaton, Catalogue of the Art Room in the Oregon Building at the Panama Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco, 1915 (Portland, Ore.: Baltes and Company, 95).

6. Ashland Tidings, Ashland 8, 92; “Painting Will Help,” Ashland Tidings, June 7, 92; Ashland Tidings, September 6, 92; Ashland Tidings, September 9, 92; “Craig Stillwell, Scientists Visit Crater Lake, 92,” Jefferson Public Radio, February 28, 27, https://archives.ijpr.org/Features.aspeatu-reID=598 (accessed July , 25).The Ashland Tidings noted Mabel Russell painting at the lake. “Methodist Return from Crater Lake,” Ashland Tidings, August 27, 94; Ashland Tidings, September , 94.

62. References to individual works of art created and sold by Russell over a period of more than a decade exist in the follow-ing: “Local and Personal,” Ashland Tidings, December 6, 92; “Local and Personal,” Ashland Tidings, March 2, 98; Ashland Tidings, December , 98; Ashland Tidings, December , 98; “Local and Personal,” Ashland Tidings, August 2, 99; “Saturday’s News,” Ashland Tidings, February 6, 92; “Well Decorated Windows,” Ashland Tid-ings, July 6, 92; “To Exhibit Paintings at

Fair,” Ashland Tidings, September 4, 92; “District Fair Premiums,” Ashland Tidings, October 7, 92; Ashland Tidings, November 6, 94; Ashland Tidings, November 26, 94: Ashland Tidings, July 2, 97; “Ashland and Vicinity,” Ashland Tidings, July 4, 95; Ashland Tidings, July 5, 95; “Contemplates Purchase of Crater Lake Picture,” Ashland Tidings, January 2, 99; and “Civic Club Purchased Picture for Library,” Ashland Tidings, March 4, 99. See also “Local and Personal,” Ashland Tidings, May 25, 96; and “Local and Personal,” Ashland Tidings, December , 92.

6. “Local and Personal,” Ashland Tid-ings, March 4, 98; “Local Artists Sells Picture,” Ashland Weekly Tidings, December 27, 922; “Los Altos,” The Evening News (San Jose), November , 927.

64. For an example of Southern Pacific round-trip transportaiton options in 97, see Crater Lake Institute, “General Infor-mation Regarding Crater Lake National Park, Season of 97,” http://www.crater-lakeinstitute.com/online-library/general-info-97/how.htm (accessed July 2, 25); “Crater Lake” (Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles: Southern Pacific, 926), . In the mid 9s, Kirk, on the east side of Crater Lake, provided a rail connection for tourists departing from the rim three days a week and making their way to Klamath Falls. See Ruth Kedzie Wood, The Tourist’s Northwest (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 96), 45; and General Information Regard-ing Crater Lake National Park, Season of 1917 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 97), 8–9.

65. “Painting Will Help,” Ashland Tid-ings, June 7, 92; Willis Hawley, testimony requesting an amendment for the construc-tion of a wagon road and necessary bridges through the Crater Lake National Park, in accord with recommendations contained in the War Department report, published as House Document 28, Sixty-second Con-gress, second session, for $5,, Congres-sional Record, House, June 4, 92, p. 894.


66. William Steel, “Report of the Su-perintendent of Crater Lake National Park,” Department of the Interior, December 6, 9.

67. Richard West Sellars, Preserving Na-ture in the National Parks: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 28), 4–4; Robert Sterling Yard, “Crater Lake National Park,” National Parks Portfolio, Washington, D. C.: Department of the Interior, 96.

68. “Fred A. Kiser: Material Prepared by Sue Seyl of Oregon Historical Society Staff,” Oregon Historical Society, Portland, Oregon, no date; “Guide to the Kiser Photo Co. Photographs, 9–999,” at http://nwda.orbiscascade.org/ark:/8444/xv2224 (ac-cessed October , 24); Sharon M. Howe, “Photography and the Making of Crater Lake National Park,” Oregon Historical Quarterly : (Spring 22): 76–95; Ashland Tidings, September , 94; Ashland Tidings, October , 94; Ashland Tidings, October 5, 94; Ash-land Tidings, February 7, 96; “Crater Lake to Be Subject of Talk,” Rogue River Courier, February 4, 96.

69. Sellars, Preserving Nature in the Na-tional Parks, 8–42, 59.

7. Dietmar Schneider-Hector. “Forg-ing a National Park Service: ‘The Necessity for Cooperation’,” Journal of the Southwest 54:4 (Winter 24): 64–82; Proceedings of the National Parks Conference, Held in the Auditorium of the New National Museum, Washington, D.C., January 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, 1917 (Washington, D.C., 97), –4, quote from p. , online at: http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.95696428;view=up;seq=7 (accessed April , 25).

7. “First Exhibition of National Parks Paintings,” 7–9, http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=chi.228429;view=up;seq=9 (accessed April , 25); “Catalogue of a Loan Collection of Forty-Five Paintings Illustrat-ing Scenes Mainly in the National Parks and Monuments . . . ” The National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., February 97; “Statement Showing Shipments of National Parks Paintings, March 6 to 9, 97”; all found in the Smith-

sonian Institution Archives, Capital Gallery Building, Washington, D.C. (sent to Gail E. Evans by Assistant Archivist Ted Bennicoff, December , 22).

72. Stephen T. Mather, “What I Am Try-ing to Do with the National Parks,” World’s Work May 924, 4–46.

7. Husted’s Oakland, Alameda & Berke-ley Directory (Oakland: F. M. Husted, 99, 9, 9, and 92); Cutler, “Joaquin Miller and the Social Circle at the Hights,” 42–4, 52, 54–57, 59.

74. Grace Fountain was present at Mill-er’s death in 9 and continued to live and paint in “The Hights” neighborhood for the next thirty years. Harr Wagner, Joaquin Miller and His Other Self (Wagner Pub. Co., 929), –6. James Fountain died in 926.

75. Garry D. Gitzen, “Is it California or Oregon’s History Where Sir Francis Drake Sojourned in 579?” http://www.fortnehalem.net/uploads/5/7/4//57462/did_francis_drake_land_in_california_or_oregon_in_579.pdf (accessed July 6, 25); “Woman, 7, Joins Hights Art Colony,” Oakland Tribune, March , 926. See also “Mount Shasta as a Visual Resource,” for biographical information about Thaddeus Welch and Harry Cassie Best and their paintings of Mount Shasta, http://www.siskiyous.edu/shasta/art/boo.htm (accessed April 5, 25).

76. Sullivan, “Oregon Family Interesting for Art and Long Living,” April 2, 94

promoting tourism and development at crater lake...exhibit booklet that accompanied yosemite...

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