See the Stunning 171-Year-Old Sketch That Helped Put Yosemite on the Map

The Library of Congress has acquired a drawing and accompanying lithograph of Yosemite Falls created by Gold Rush-era artist Thomas Almond Ayres in 1855

Sarah Kuta | Daily Correspondent

March 25, 2026

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In 1849, Thomas Almond Ayres left his home in New Jersey and headed off to California to make his fortune in the gold mines. But once he got there, Ayres changed course, focusing primarily on art rather than mining.

“He must have found that in his case a brush was a more profitable tool than a pick, for at the end of a year he returned to San Francisco, his portfolio bulging past closing with sketches of Gold Rush towns and the mining country,” wrote Jeanne Van Nostrand in the California Historical Society Quarterly in 1941.

Ayres used his creative skills to sketch some of California’s most iconic landscapes, including several sites in Yosemite Valley. The destination was already somewhat well-known for its beauty. But after one of Ayres’ drawings was published in a magazine, the area’s popularity skyrocketed.

Now, the Library of Congress has acquired two of Ayres’ early Yosemite masterpieces—a drawing and an accompanying lithograph, both created in 1855.

According to the Library of Congress, Ayres’ drawing and lithograph were some of the earliest widely circulated visual representations of Yosemite. They predated Carleton Watkins’ famous photographs and Albert Bierstadt’s 1860s paintings.

Because of Ayres’ artwork, “Yosemite became a sensation, enchanting the rest of the country just as Ayres himself had been,” according to the Library of Congress.

The library acquired the drawing and lithograph with funding from the James Madison Council, its philanthropic support group, to help celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Moving forward, the institution plans to make the images widely available online.

Ayres visited Yosemite Valley for the first time in June 1855 at the age of 39, traveling alongside English-born entrepreneur James Mason Hutchings. Together, the men followed two hired Miwok guides “along a trail used to reach an Indigenous summer hunting and gathering ground, having heard rumors of a sublime landscape,” says Sara W. Duke, curator of popular and applied graphic art for the Library of Congress, in a statement.

Ayres spent several days sketching the “High Falls,” now known as Yosemite Falls, creating multiple versions of the scene for display and sale. Hutchings published one in Illustrated California magazine, a publication he created to help promote tourism in the state. The drawing, called The High Falls, Valley of the Yo Semity, California, and a companion lithograph were both published in 1855.

Ayres created the original, 14-by-20-inch drawing using graphite, ink, chalk and charcoal on paper. When he finished the sketch, he scratched “Thos. A. Ayres, del.” into the surface—markings that are still visible today.

The scene includes several people gathered around a campfire in the foreground, with the towering waterfall and surrounding granite cliffs behind them.

“Ayres’ drawing is amazing for conveying the serenity and majesty of Yosemite,” Duke says in the statement. “These men felt the importance of preserving this pristine place in a state where gold mining had changed so much land.”

Roughly a decade later, federal leaders moved to protect the region with the Yosemite Grant Act of 1864, a novel piece of legislation that preserved the land for public use. Ayres returned to the valley for a second time in 1856, when he “visited all of today’s most famous landmarks: El Capitan, Half Dome, Bridalveil Fall,” writes SFGate’s Katie Dowd.

“The water comes over the sharp granite edge of the precipice, then descending, is broken into fleecy forms, sometimes swayed hither and thither by the wayward winds,” Ayres wrote of Bridalveil Fall, then known as Cascade of the Rainbow, for the Daily Alta California in August 1856. “At other times the sun lights up its spray with all the colors of the rainbow, hanging like a prismatic veil from the sombre cliff.”

After that, he ventured down to Southern California to continue his work. Ayres is thought to have died in the spring of 1858 while traveling aboard the schooner Laura Bevan. He was sailing from San Pedro to San Francisco when the vessel encountered a storm and wrecked off the coast of what’s now Malibu. Ayres’ body and his Southern California sketches were never recovered.

“So to have a drawing … rendered in 1855 of this experience in Yosemite is amazing to be able to offer to the American people,” Duke tells the San Francisco Chronicle’s Brooke Park.

Meanwhile, Congress created Yosemite National Park in October 1890, setting aside roughly 1,500 square miles of land at the urging of John Muir and other conservationists. In 1906, the state gave the federal government Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias so they could become part of the new park.

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Sarah Kuta is a writer and editor based in Longmont, Colorado. She covers history, science, travel, food and beverage, sustainability, economics and other topics.