About This Image

Credit and caption printed on face of mount below print; "Grading on Big Bluff, three miles above Heron's Rapids."

The photograph shows the land being leveled for building the railroad tracks.

Isaac Davidson, one of the Northwest's premier photographers, published an extensive series of photographs documenting the scenery and rural communities of Oregon, Washington and Alaska. Davidson was contracted under the name "Schuster & Davidson" to document the building of the railroad by the Northern Pacific Railroad Co. in the mid-1870's.