AA-2026-59CB12
On the image
A pair of forested peaks frame a mountain valley under a blue sky scattered with cumulus clouds, their slopes dark with conifer stands that speak to the Pacific Northwest or Northern Rockies in the midcentury era. Thin power lines cross the middle distance—evidence that even remote passes had begun to receive the infrastructure of the postwar electrification push, a modest assertion that civilization could be strung across a valley and left to do its work without much comment. The picture was taken from inside a vehicle, through glass, which is why the foreground dissolves into the soft blur of industrial-age travel: a tourist or surveyor or engineer passing through, stopping only long enough to note that the landscape was still worth photographing, and that the wires belonged there now. The composition suggests someone who understood that mountains read better when framed by something smaller in the middle distance, and that power lines, whatever their homely utilitarian purpose, had become part of how Americans saw their own geography by 1950.
The historian's note
The construction of high-voltage transmission corridors across the American West accelerated sharply after 1945, as rural electrification programs and the postwar economic expansion created demand for power distribution to remote regions. Mountain passes like this one became routine crossing points for lines serving valleys, mining operations, and early ski resort development. The photographic documentation of infrastructure in landscape—particularly color film records of this period—reflects the simultaneous pride in technological mastery and the beginning of a visual record of landscape transformation that would become more contested by the 1970s.
Subjects & keywords — each links to a search
Visually related — by likeness
Mountain Pass with Power Lines, circa 1950s. 1948–1955. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-59CB12. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/mountain-pass-with-power-lines-circa-1950s.
@misc{aaAA202659CB12,
title = {Mountain Pass with Power Lines, circa 1950s},
year = {1948–1955},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-59CB12},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/mountain-pass-with-power-lines-circa-1950s}
}TY - ART TI - Mountain Pass with Power Lines, circa 1950s PY - 1948–1955 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-59CB12 UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/mountain-pass-with-power-lines-circa-1950s ER -
From the community
Identifications, corrections, and discussion from readers — reviewed by a librarian before appearing here.
Sign in to add an identification, correction, or comment.
No notes yet — be the first to add what you know about this image.