Section of the Grizzly Giant with Galen Clark, Mariposa Grove, Yosemite

Mammoth plate albumen silver print. Approx. 16 x 20 in., original mount.
Naef and Hult-Lewis, Carleton Watkins: The Complete Mammoth Photographs 105.

An iconic Yosemite photograph. This famous photograph shows Galen Clark standing at the foot of the colossal Grizzly Giant sequoia. Clark was the first European American to discover the Marisposa Grove of giant sequoias at Yosemite. Named Guardian of Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove in 1866, Clark was instrumental in securing legislation to protect the trees. Camping beneath the Grizzly Giant in 1903 inspired Theodore Roosevelt to establish several other national parks, forests, and monuments, and in 1905 he created the U. S. Forest Service. Roosevelt said the Mariposa Grove was "a temple grander than any human architect could by any possibility build."

In the summer of 2022 the National Park Service and firefighters went to extraordinary lengths to protect the beloved tree during the Washburn fire. They delivered 15-20 gallons of water per minute to the base of the tree to increase humidity, while clearing debris and taking down smaller trees in the vicinity. In 2020-2021 fires killed or mortally wounded nearly one-fifth of the world's sequoias.

Carleton Watkins is the greatest of the first generation of photographers of the American West. His early photographs of Yosemite and Utah have never been surpassed. When his work was exhibited back East, the New York Times declared, "As specimens of the photographic art they are unequaled. The views are … indescribably unique and beautiful. Nothing in the way of landscapes can be more impressive."

"Watkins, whose livelihood was dependent on sales of his California views to tourists, no doubt made this image with a mind to impressing Easterners and propagating the notion that the West was America's own amazing Garden of Eden. To illustrate its awesome scale, Watkins posed the explorer Galen Clark at the base of this massive three-hundred-year old tree known as the Grizzly Giant. Along with the Yosemite Valley, the Big Trees in the Mariposa Grove were on every early tourist's route through the region" (Metropolitan Museum of Art).

For more than 150 years Watkins has retained his place as one of America's greatest photographic artists. In 1999 Douglas R. Nickel, writing with the benefit of almost 135 years of photographic perspective, called Watkins's photographs "the finest landscape photographs produced by an American in the nineteenth century, and some of the most sophisticated and arresting images ever produced with a camera."