Camera Pioneer

When William Henry Jackson was mustered out of the Army of the Potomac after the battle of Gettysburg, he drifted west, finally settled in Omaha. There he started a flourishing business in tintypes and stereopticon views. When the U. S. Geological Survey decided to chart the badlands of Wyoming, Photographer Jackson was asked to go along to take pictures. The pictures he took, of Wyoming's geysers and waterfalls, were directly responsible for Congress' decision to put the small rectangle of Yellowstone National Park on the map of the U. S.

By the 1870s Jackson had become the best-known and most successful landscape photographer in the U. S. He crisscrossed the Rockies on pack mules and in covered wagons, took the first photographs ever made of the Mountain of the Holy Cross in western Colorado, of the Pueblo ruins of New Mexico and Arizona. In the 18903 he got the job of official photographer for Harper's Weekly, which sent him abroad, from Australia to Russia, photographing Chinese sampans and Siberian droshkies.

Last week the museum on the first floor of Secretary Harold Ickes' new, white, boxlike Department of the Interior Building in Washington was given over to an exhibition of Pioneer Jackson's aged photographs. Admired by public and connoisseurs alike were the vivid detail and panoramic scope of the mountain and forest views that Old Master Jackson had snap ped with his battered, wooden 6 1/2-by-8 1/2 camera in days when photography was scarcely more than a stunt. Best exhibit of all was spry Oldster Jackson himself, stooped and white-bearded but talkative and effervescent at 97.

William Henry Jackson still takes pictures, but with an up-to-date Leica, does a little sketching on the side, spends his spare time polishing his autobiography, which is due next month. Says he: "A fellow has to keep busy or he gets bored. I'm never bored." Three years ago, when his cronies of the G. A. R. hobbled bravely down Manhattan's Fifth Avenue in their Memorial-Day parade, Veteran Jackson failed to march. "Poor old Bill!" sighed his aged brothers-in-arms. Later they discovered that Bill Jackson had been dodging in & out of the crowds all along the route, taking pictures of the parade.

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