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First Aerial Photograph of Los Angeles

William Randolph Hearst Promotional Stunt

This photograph view stands as the first known aerial photograph of Los Angeles.  It was taken on June 27, 1887, by photographer Edwin H. Husher, from a tethered hot air balloon guided by aeronaut Professor Park Van Tassel.

The first known aerial photographs of Los Angeles were made on the afternoon of June 26, 1887, by photographer Edwin H. Husher from a hot air balloon at 9,000 to 14,000 feet. The flight was a high-profile publicity stunt orchestrated by the young William Randolph Hearst to promote his upstart San Francisco Examiner. At the time Hearst was aggressively expanding his influence and competing with rival newspaperman Joseph Pulitzer. Several photographs were taken during the balloon’s ascent and later reproduced as engraved cuts in the Examiner in a special Southern California section of the Aug. 14, 1887 issue. The spectacle drew wide attention - residents reportedly climbed onto rooftops to watch the balloon rise over the city. While the event served its immediate promotional purpose, the resulting images endure as some of the earliest aerial views of Los Angeles - revealing a dusty, angular city in its infancy. Captured at the height of the 1880s Southern California land boom, the photographs offer a rare glimpse of a region on the cusp of transformation, with Los Angeles already emerging as the colossus of the Southland.

The balloon was launched from Agricultural Park (now Exposition Park). The resulting photograph offers a remarkable bird’s-eye view of a still sparsely developed Los Angeles urban core, with scattered buildings, orchards, and unpaved roads, capturing the city on the brink of its dramatic late 19th-century expansion. A newspaper report from the time stated:

Mr. Husher spoke very enthusiastically at his expectations regarding the photographs... Prof. Van Tassel and Mr. Husher were met as soon as they came down [at the landing point in San Fernando Valley] by Mr. Holmes, a rancher in the vicinity, who drove them back to this city. Van Tassel says that it was one of the finest trips he ever took, and was loud in his praises of the beauty and appearance of cultivation which he view of the surrounding country afforded. During the trip thirteen photographs were taken... The balloon reached an altitude of 14,300 feet. Van Tassel says that he never was as far from terra firma before, and if it were not for the unerring indications of the barometer he could not have believed that he had reached such a high altitude. The gas had plenty of room for expansion, so the bag was allowed to soar upwards without restraint. On next Sunday cuts will appear in the Examiner of the different views taken during the trip, and they will be eagerly watched for by the residents of Los Angles - Los Angeles Herald, June 28, 1887.

The four-hour flight was apparently not without incident. The balloon encountered some turbulence over the Santa Monica Mountains.

Aeronaut Van Tassel 

Park Albert Van Tassel (1853-1930) was a pioneering American aeronaut known for his daring balloon ascensions and parachute exhibitions across the western United States during the late 19th century. Beginning in the 1880s, Van Tassel gained national attention for his aerial performances at fairs, expositions, and public events, often ascending in gas balloons and descending via parachute - a spectacle that thrilled crowds from California to New Mexico. He also staged dramatic promotional stunts for William Randolph Hearst and the San Francisco Examiner, helping to draw attention to the newspaper’s bold new style. Van Tassel was among the earliest to popularize ballooning as public entertainment in the American West, and his exhibitions not only advanced aeronautics as a field of public fascination but also laid groundwork for later developments in aviation.

Aerial Views from Balloons

For context it is interesting to note that the earliest aerial photograph of an American city was made in 1860 by photographer James Wallace Black from Prof. Samuel A. King's balloon. It depicted, in the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes, "Boston As the Eagle and the Wild Goose See It."  Balloons were also used to produce detailed bird's-eye view lithographs of major cities during the mid-19th-century.

Rarity

The image is very rare.  We note an example at the Los Angeles Public Library.

No examples listed in OCLC in institutional collections.

We were unable to locate any auction or dealer records.