Southern Appalachian Digital Collections

Western Carolina University (20) View all

Mountain landscape

  • wcu_great_smoky_mtns-7022.jpg
  • The photograph of a mountain landscape was made by George Alexander Grant (1891-1964), first chief photographer for the U.S. National Park Service. Grant began work in 1929 under Horace Albright, second NPS director, who hired him to create a documentary file of images for use in reports, interpretive projects, education, and public information. Considered an Eminent Photographer, many of Grant’s photographs were published without his name, instead, being credited as an “NPS photo.” Before his retirement in 1954, Grant created approximately 30,000-40,000 images for NPS.