He is also known for his images of Bismarck, Deadwood and Yellowstone.
The future showed little promise for Frank Jay Haynes when he arrived in Moorhead, Minnesota, from Wisconsin in September 1876 to live with his sister and brother-in-law, Ella and Gus Henderson. The unemployed 22-year-old Michigan native had barely earned a living as a traveling salesman and itinerant photographer after his father’s business had failed in the wake of the financial Panic of 1873 that devastated the United States and Europe. Other than his clothes, the only things of value Haynes possessed were a camera and photographic chemicals.
Haynes had learned the craft on the job, making tintypes and processing glass plate negatives as a photographer’s apprentice. A yearlong stint with noted Wisconsin photographer William H. Lockwood had provided not only the necessary experience but also an introduction to Lockwood’s sister-in-law and F. Jay’s future wife, Lily Snyder. Lockwood and his wife were opposed to the relationship between Haynes and Snyder, and the resulting friction had apparently led to the young man’s dismissal just days before his arrival in Moorhead. Regardless, with his newfound skill and money borrowed from his brother-in-law, Haynes opened a studio near the Northern Pacific Railroad depot in the frontier community on the Red River.
The Panic of 1873 halted westward construction of the Northern Pacific at Bismarck, Dakota Territory, until 1879. Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer and 10 companies of the 7th U.S. Cavalry had formed part of a military escort for railroad surveyors along the Yellowstone River in Montana Territory just prior to the collapse of the economy that year. Ironically, resistance by Sitting Bull’s Hunkpapa Lakotas may have shaken investor confidence in the Northern Pacific and thus indirectly precipitated the subsequent depression. Published reports of Custer’s skirmishes with the Sioux, according to one theory, had contributed to the banking failure that led to the economic crisis.
To solicit financial support for further construction, the Northern Pacific sought to encourage settlement of sparsely populated Dakota Territory. “The line promoted itself heavily,” wrote historian Paul L. Hedren, “and readily sold acreage received in land grants carved out of the public domain.” With this goal in mind it commissioned Haynes to photograph successful farms and other prominent points on the line from Duluth to Bismarck.
In October 1876 he took his first journey west by rail to the lawless frontier town on the Missouri River named for the chancellor of Germany. The Dalrymple farm in the Red River valley was among the sites he photographed along the way. “Mr. Dalrymple,” Haynes informed Lily of the farmer’s reaction to his images, “says they are splendid and wants me to go out there again to make more negatives.” His professional success seemed assured.
Fortune did, indeed, smile on Haynes, for he would become the official photographer of the Northern Pacific Railroad and Yellowstone National Park, commencing a long, successful career distinguished by his outstanding landscape portraits of the West. The quality of these images (Yellowstone stands out) speaks for itself. His reputation clearly led, for example, to his appointment as the official photographer of President Chester A. Arthur’s excursion through Yellowstone in August 1883, where he posed the president and other dignitaries in the party, including Lt. Gen. Philip Sheridan and Secretary of War Robert Todd Lincoln.
Students of the June 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn appreciate Haynes for his images of Bismarck and Fort Abraham Lincoln during his first journey west and a second trip the following year. In 1876 Bismarck was notorious for its frequent shootings involving gamblers and soldiers, including 7th Cavalry troopers. “Prostitutes, gamblers and all kinds of toughs were in the majority,” Lieutenant Charles A. Varnum remembered of his first visit. “The saloons were filled with brawling men.” Others, including Custer’s wife, Elizabeth, recorded similar observations about the wild railroad town on the Missouri. (Deadwood would also leave Haynes with a negative first impression when he photographed that notorious Black Hills gold rush town in 1877.) Among those Haynes encountered on his second trip to Bismarck were Philetus Norris, the second superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, and Orlando S. Goff, the post photographer at Fort Abraham Lincoln, who gained note for his images of Custer and other officers of the famous frontier garrison. “He [Goff] is acquainted with Lockwood,” Haynes wrote, referring to his future brother-in-law. “[Goff] says he [Lockwood] is much better at playing on the guitar than making pictures.”
While visiting the fort’s cavalry barracks, Haynes photographed Captain Myles W. Keogh’s horse, Comanche (who, unlike Keogh, survived the Little Bighorn), and the 7th Cavalry band. A Gatling gun and its crew posed for Haynes and posterity at the infantry post. Another notable subject of his camera was the moored supply steamer Far West, which had transported the Little Bighorn wounded to the fort. Photographs of Bismarck complemented this early endeavor. “I have had three days of nice weather,” F. Jay informed Lily on June 18, 1877, “and have made some over 30 negatives at the fort [Lincoln] yesterday. Each officer and many soldiers want a set.”
Haynes dated his Gatling gun photograph June 1877, although evidence in the image as well as historical documentation suggest he had photographed the gun and its crew when he had visited Bismarck the year before. At least one of the enlisted men in the photo belonged to the 20th U.S. Infantry. Members of that regiment had manned the Gatling gun detachment that had marched with Brig. Gen. Alfred Terry’s Dakota column from Fort Lincoln on May 17, 1876. But records indicate that no companies of the 20th were posted at Fort Lincoln in June 1877. Haynes had clearly intended to visit the garrison in 1876. “The U.S. government fort is there,” he had written the previous October. “I will be able to get some fine views there as the scenery is splendid.”
Following his marriage to Lily in 1878, F. Jay Haynes relocated his studio to Fargo, Dakota Territory (1879) and finally St. Paul, Minn. (1889). He remained under contract with the Northern Pacific, documenting the line’s extension west of Bismarck, and established a franchise in Yellowstone, visiting the park every year. (On Haynes’ death in 1921, Yellowstone National Park Superintendent Horace Albright named a peak in his honor; 8,218-foot Mount Haynes overlooks the Madison River.) Believing his career depended on the steady development of the West, he sought broader horizons by which to expand his business, chronicling people and places as far away as Washington state, Alaska and the western Canadian provinces through a variety of photographic formats.
History as well as other photographers have benefited from Haynes’ endeavors, thanks to his son, Jack Ellis Haynes, who preserved his father’s glass plate negatives. The son’s widow donated them to the Montana Historical Society over a period of years, beginning in 1978. “Haynes,” the society notes, “looked upon—and preserved for us—the days when the Old West began to change into the New. For the last quarter of the 19th century he traveled continually, recording the lasts and the firsts of an era of dynamic change.”
The 9,000 images of the F. Jay Haynes Collection in Helena, Mont., represent a significant chronicle of the rich history of Montana and the U.S. Northwest in the late 19th century. A true testament to the photographer’s skill and creativity, they are an enduring artistic, technical and historical legacy.
Originally published in the June 2014 issue of Wild West. To subscribe, click here.
