Cinnabar Mountain, Devil Slide

Haynes employed a large-format glass plate negative and the albumen printing process, both cutting‑edge methods in the late 19th century. The size of the negative permitted fine detail and a wide field of view, while the albumen emulsion rendered the bright, natural illumination with sharp contrast.

Born in Michigan, Haynes began working for the Northern Pacific Railroad in the late 1870s and continued as its official photographer until 1905. During that tenure he documented much of the Pacific Northwest, producing images such as this one that illustrate the railroad’s reach across the region.

The photograph belongs to a period when railroads were pivotal to western settlement and commerce. By recording the landscape alongside the tracks, Haynes contributed visual evidence of the era’s technological progress and its impact on the American West.