This book tells the intertwined story of photography and the American West — a new medium and a new place that came together in the nineteenth century. The story begins just a few years after the invention of the daguerreotype in 1839, as pioneering photographers followed American troops in to the Mexican American War. It then follows the enterprising photographers who set out across the overland trails, recorded the California gold rush, documented Native life, and pictured the spectacular topography of the American West. Using many little known images of the nineteenth-century West, the book tells the story of how Americans relied on western photographs to envision the expanding nation.

Winner: 2002 Organization of American Historians Ray Allen Billington Prize for the best book in American frontier history; 2003 William P. Clements Prize for the best non-fiction book on Southwestern America; 2004 Barbara Sudler Award sponsored by the Colorado Historical Society