Abstract
Carleton E. Watkins was a pioneer photographer who documented the farms and ranches of Kern County, California, in 1888. His work, reflecting a sense of order and harmony and depicting a utopia of endless promise, can be seen as the expression of a powerful landscape legend by which settlers were able to comprehend a new region and put it to use. With this legend, settlers confronted an unknown, hostile, and arid region, took possession of it, and turned it into a garden. The visual portrait that Watkins gives us, combined with its accompanying text, allows us to understand and appreciate the geography, economy, and emerging social structure of the region as factors that shaped its unique landscape history.
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