The Tetons and the Snake River (1942)

The Mural Project

In the mid-1930s Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes planned murals for the department's headquarters building in Washington. The idea later grew into a set of mural-size photographs, and in 1941 the National Park Service commissioned Ansel Adams to make them. The theme, in the National Archives' words, was nature as exemplified and protected in the U.S. National Parks.

Adams was appointed at the maximum pay then allowed for a position that did not need congressional approval: twenty-two dollars and twenty-two cents a day, for no more than 180 days of work a year. He began traveling to the parks in October 1941 and delivered his prints to the department about a year later. His itinerary included Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, Kings Canyon, Mesa Verde, Rocky Mountain, Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glacier, Zion and Carlsbad Caverns, along with monuments and other sites in the Southwest. The project was halted during World War II and never resumed.

What the photograph shows

The Snake River winds through the foreground and middle distance in a broad curve, catching the light against darker banks of trees. Beyond it the Teton Range rises above the valley under heavy clouds. The river leads the eye back toward the mountains, and the deep tonal range, from black shadow to bright water and snow, is typical of the large prints Adams made for the project.

A National Park Service historic resource study of Grand Teton calls it the climax vision of the park and reads it as an image of untouched nature. The same study notes that the picture was made in a rainstorm.

Where Adams stood

The National Park Service marks the Snake River Overlook as roughly the vantage point from which Adams made the photograph. The Park Service also notes that the exact spot is not known and that trees have grown since 1942, so the view from the overlook today does not match his frame.

Why it is in the public domain

Adams made the Mural Project photographs while employed by the Department of the Interior. In an August 1942 letter he stated that the photographs were the property of the U.S. Government. The National Archives, which accessioned the original prints in 1962, says the photographs in series 79-AA have no copyright restrictions and may be used without permission. Adams kept the negatives, which are now at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona.

This is different from most of Adams's work. His best-known independent photographs, such as Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, Monolith, the Face of Half Dome and Clearing Winter Storm, were not made for the government, are not National Archives records and are not part of this archive.

Voyager and later fame

When NASA launched the two Voyager spacecraft in 1977, each carried a gold-plated record of sounds and images from Earth, assembled by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan. NASA's list of images on the Golden Record includes "Snake River and Grand Tetons, Ansel Adams," and another Adams photograph, the Golden Gate Bridge, is also on the record.

The Department of the Interior finally installed 26 of the Mural Project photographs as murals in its headquarters in 2010, in an exhibit titled Ansel Adams: The Mural Project 1941–1942. Museums including the National Gallery of Art hold later prints from the 1942 negative.

The version in this archive

This archive holds the National Archives print catalogued as "The Tetons - Snake River," Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, local identifier 79-AAG-1, from the series Ansel Adams Photographs of National Parks and Monuments. The title follows the original caption on the print. It is one of 220 Mural Project photographs on this site; the full set can be browsed on the Ansel Adams subject page.