Charles Leander Weed

Charles Leander Weed was an American photographer, who was born in New York state in 1824, and died in 1903. He is perhaps best known for being one of the earliest photographers, if not the first photographer, to enter and photograph what is now Yosemite National Park.

In 1854, during the California Gold Rush, Weed moved to Sacramento, California, and was a camera operator in the daguerreotype portrait studio of George J. Watson. In 1855, Weed adopted the wet collodion technique, and his photographs of Gold Rush miners and settlement were much admired.

Entrepreneur James Hutchings and others ventured into the area of what is now known as Yosemite Valley in 1855, becoming the Valley's first tourists. After returning to Mariposa Hutchings wrote an article about his experience which appeared in the August 9, 1855 issue of the Mariposa Gazette and was later published in various forms nationally.

Hutchings brought Weed to the Valley in the summer of 1859. Weed took the first known photographs of the Valley's features, and a September exhibition in San Francisco presented them to the public. Hutchings published four installments of "The Great Yo-semite Valley" from October 1859 to March 1860 in his magazine; these articles contained woodcuts based on Weed's photographs. A book by Hutchings titled Scenes of Wonder and Curiosity in California collected these articles and the book stayed in print well into the 1870s.

Beginning in 1860, Weed started extensive traveling, including trips to Hong Kong (where he briefly established a studio), Hawaii, and the Far East (in 1867). Also in 1867, he presented his work at the Paris Exposition Universelle, where he won an award for landscape photography.

In 1872, Weed made another visit to Yosemite, probably in the company of well-known Yosemite photographer Eadweard Muybridge. Weed concluded his career by working as a photoengraver.