Page last updated: October 21, 2022
All glass plate photographs by Harold A. Taylor. Digital images copyright © 2022 by Pinyon Publishing. No reproduction without permission.
Vintage Yosemite (2022): Glass Plate Photographs of Early 20th-Century Yosemite. (6"x9" paperback, 162 pages, ISBN: 978-1-936671-89-2, $35.00).
“Being young I used to walk all the trails and carry my photographic outfit
which in those days was no small item, 8 x 10 camera, tripod, and glass plates,
but I thought nothing of it and often would outwalk the mules.”
—Harold A. Taylor
In the winter of 1902-3, Harold Taylor and Eugene Hallett formed the Studio of the Three Arrows in Yosemite Valley, accompanied by four other photographic studios:
- George Fiske, described by Taylor: ”the pioneer was a grand old gentleman and his collection of photographs especially snow scenes were superb, I doubt if they have ever been surpassed.“
- Julius Boysen, who Taylor worked for in the summer of 1902
- Daniel J. Foley
- Harry Best, Ansel Adam’s father-in-law
In the first decade of the 20th century, Yosemite was still quite primitive but growing fast.
- Taylor loved to hear Galen Clark, the “first guardian of the valley,” tell of the “early” days.
- Of Mr. Curry (of Camp Curry, which “for $2.00 a day ... would provide guests with a tent, good food and the company of like-minded Souls”), Taylor recalled his “stentorious voice ... calling to Glacier Point every evening.”
- From 1902-1907, the fee to operate his studio in Yosemite rose from $1/year to $250/year.
- On access into Yosemite Valley, Taylor said: “We did not spend the winters in the valley, usually coming in April every year and the Yosemite Valley railroad was not built. This necessitated our getting our supplies in late in the fall for the next spring, as the roads were not opened for freight travel until May often. Six horse teams used to bring it from Raymond via Wawona.”
- Taylor remembers the first electricity in Yosemite: “The first summer I was in the valley they built the electric light plant and Happy Isles and I remember well when the first lights were turned on.”
Miwok Indian Camp
Taylor and Hallett sold the Studio of the Three Arrows to Arthur C. Pillsbury in 1907.
Taylor quotations from a 1949 letter from Harold Taylor to Yosemite administrator, Ralph Anderson.
Studio of the Three Arrows
Named for Taylor’s family crest and the Yosemite Miwok Indians
Studio of the Three Arrows, Yosemite Valley, ca. 1902-1907
