were truly romantic evocations of the West, others depicted construction sites or inhospitable landscapes; only the captions could remind viewers of the "finest trout" in the rivers or the "luxurious growth of grass, wild rye, barley" that might feed future inhabitants. This album, like others of its time, perpetuated the notion of Manifest Destiny, and the accompanying erasure of Native American presence; Native Americans do not appear in this album, which viewed the West as a "tabula rasa" upon with the country's future could be built. In 1869 he returned to Utah Territory to photograph the completion of the First transcontinental railroad, or "golden spike" on May 10, 1869, at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory. for this work, Russell used his single-view camera. Russell took five group portraits that day, at least two were "...sent to New York as news pictures and arrived in time to be copied by engravers for the front page of the June 5 issue of Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper." These photographs and others have value today "... principally as sources for the identification of persons." One photograph shows a rank of sixteen men under the title "Engineers of U.P.R.R. at the Laying of Last Rail Promentory (sic)." This famous photograph of the meeting of the rails, celebrated the joining of East and West, the reduction of a perilous 6 month wagon journey across the US to one that would take a mere 6 days, yet did not include any of the 11,000 Chinese laborers who had laid the tracks across the Sierra Nevada and the desert and into Utah. This ceremony marked the end of Russell's tenure as the official photographer of the Union Pacific railroad, a position he had taken after filling the same post for the Union Army during the Civil War. By 1869 he had in fact "...labored for nearly two years to produce over 200 full plate (10" x 13") images and over 500 stereo cards. In general, Russell's work partook in the company's general effort to heroicize its own undertaking — an early form of advertising." Later that year he traveled to California to photograph locations on the Central Pacific Railroad and returned to New York City at the end of 1869. Later career In New York, Russell established a design studio and worked as a photojournalist for Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper through the early 1890s. Personal life On 17 October 1850,