Their route took them on a guided trek by packhorse across Mexico, passing through plains and rich agricultural valleys, rocky mountain passes, small towns and grand cities. Antrim recorded the journey in three diaries and two sketchbooks that trace his experience at sea and then camping and moving overland from Tampico via San Luis Potosí and Guadalajara, ending in April at Mazatlán with his first sighting of the Pacific Ocean.
Antrim was impressed by the natural landscapes and built environments, architecture, design, feats of engineering and infrastructure, and he sketched as often as he could. He found geology, stones and minerals intriguing and wrote of crops, trees and the types of foods available in local markets. He observed class differences and noted the varied receptiveness of people to Americans that his group encountered. He saw poverty as well as prosperity and experienced the social authority of the Mexican military and the Catholic Church.
Antrim drew grand views of the changing and often epic geography. He also captured the intricacies of Spanish colonial architecture, cathedrals, government buildings, plazas, parks, haciendas and city landscape design.
The result was an illustrated travelogue, a kind of time capsule that captured relatively undeveloped parts of rural Mexico as he witnessed them in midcentury and many edifices that remain destinations for tourists and religious pilgrims today.
Antrim went on to make a living as a daguerreotypist in California and Hawaii before returning to the Eastern United States for the remainder of his life.
A finding aid to the Antrim journals and sketchbooks is available online with links to the digital content on the Library’s website. In February 2025, transcriptions created by volunteers were added to the digital presentation by the Library’s By the People crowdsourcing transcription program.
Subscribe to the blog— it’s free!