Russell (1829-1902) grew up in Nunda, New York but moved to Hornell in 1859 and New York City in 1860. He was a painter of landscapes, portraits, and moving panoramas. He enlisted in the Union Army as a captain in 1863 and he became a military railroad photographer. After the war he returned to New York City but in 1868 he was given an opportunity by the Union Pacific Railroad to photograph the building of the transcontinental railroad. Between 1868 and 1869 he traveled from Nebraska to California and took over 900 stereographic and 10x13 inch large-format glass-plate negatives. In 1870 Russell returned to New York City and published his own series of stereo-views with over 600 images. Later his Union Pacific negatives ended up in the hands of paymaster O.C. Smith and then Stephen Sedgwick. These two men issued their own series but did not credit Russell as the photographer. He worked from 1870 to 1880 as an illustrator and photographer for Leslie's Illustrated.

Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden (1829-1887) was a pioneer geologist and the head of various geological and geographical surveys in the West from 1867 to 1886. Hayden was raised in New York and graduated with an M.D. from the Albany Medical School in 1853. During the civil war he was a surgeon, but before the war, he spent most of his time in the West exploring and studying geology.