Charles B. Turrill (1854-1927) was a professional San Francisco photographer who rode the Southern Pacific Railroad’s Sunset Route from El Paso to the mouth of the Pecos River and photographed what he saw there.
Collection consists of photographs and glass negatives of Trans-Pecos Texas, including numerous scenes of El Paso, Texas, and the borderlands with Mexico. Other scenes portray Marfa, Paisano Pass, Toronto Canyon, Murphysville (now Alpine), Shumla, Rio Grande canyons and caves, the Pecos River Viaduct and the Painted Cave with its Indian pictographs. Images are arranged numerically in existing order established by the photographer; numbers and often titles are written directly on the negatives.
Access is restricted to negatives and original prints. Duplicate prints are open for research in the Prints and Photographs Collection file entitled “Railroads--Southern Pacific.”
Southern Pacific Sunset Route Photographs, ca. 1890, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin.
Basic processing and cataloging of
this collection was supported with funds from the National Historical
Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) for the Briscoe Center’s