Born in 1828 in Nunda, New York, Andrew J. Russell worked as a portrait and landscape painter as a young man. In 1862, he organized a local militia unit for service in the Civil War and he learned the craft of photography along the way. Several years later in 1868, he began a project to document the construction of the Union Pacific railroad during its long march to its meeting point with the Central Pacific in Promontory Point, Utah. Russell made three trips west in 1868 and 1869, and he made several hundred plate negatives as part of his extensive work. The Yale Collection of Western Americana has a great deal of his work, and this digital collection brings together a diverse set of these materials for consideration by the public. On the site, visitors can browse through these images, which include bridge construction photographs, shots of the surrounding landscapes, and men at work.