The Grizzly Giant Sequoia, Mariposa Grove, California  1873

In May 1863 Bierstadt and the writer Fitz Hugh Ludlow left New York for the artist’s second trip through the West. Their principal objective was to capture the beauty of Yosemite Valley, which the photographs of Carleton Watkins (1829-1916) had revealed to astonished New Yorkers in 1862. In a drawing room in San Francisco in August, on the eve of their departure for the fi...