In August 1911 Philemon Beecher Van Trump sat for this glass plate negative portrait by Asahel Curtis. The two men looking at each other through the cut glass lens that day witnessed our part of the world from the high country, as mountaineers.
On August 17th, 1870 Van Trump and fellow climber Hazard Stevens recorded the first documented ascent of Mt. Rainier (Tahoma). At the time he was the 32 year old private secretary to Territorial Governor Marshall F. Moore and Hazard was the son of Washington’s first governor Isaac Stevens. Van Trump became a part of the mountain, living much of his later life at Longmire hot springs, guiding John Muir to the summit in 1888 and Fay Fuller (the first woman to summit) in 1890 and working with the Sierra Club on the designation of the National Park in 1899.
The steady trusting gaze in this portrait reflects a long friendship between the subject and photographer. Van Trump and Asahel Curtis trekked many miles together in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest even though Curtis was 35 years his junior. Its not at all difficult to imagine the two men stopping together on a high country trail, sharing a sense of wonder and setting up a camera to capture the moment. You can see it in the images.
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tacoma history 