Frank Jay Haynes photographs, approximately 1879-1891

F. Jay Haynes was a photographer who traveled extensively in the West and who was best known for his early photographs of Yellowstone National Park. He was also the official photographer for the Northern Pacific Railroad, and for a time he even maintained a special railroad car equipped as a mobile photography studio which was called the "Haynes Palace Studio." He opened his first studio in 1876 in Moorhead, Minnesota, and in 1879 opened a larger studio in Fargo, North Dakota. In 1889 he began operating out of St. Paul, Minnesota. In the period just before the Yukon gold rush, when tourist travel to Alaska was increasing, Haynes traveled to Alaska in 1891. The trip was a financial success as Haynes was able to tap into the high demand for stereoscopic prints and other photographs, although the most valuable photographs were those he took of glaciers.