Martin Mason Hazeltine was a first-class itinerant photographer and a major source of western stereographic negatives in the 1860s and 1870s. He was born in Vermont on July 31, 1827, the son of Asa and Fanny (Bancroft) Hazeltine, both natives of Vermont.

Hazeltine's first visit to California was in 1850 when he spent the next two years mining for gold. Upon his return home in 1852, he and his younger brother, George Irving Hazeltine, learned the art of daguerreotypy. In October 1853, the pair departed for California by way of New York, where they visited the Crystal Palace Exhibition before boarding their ship. Two months later they arrived in San Francisco and operated a daguerreotype studio together until 1855. At that time, Martin and George parted ways and began their separate careers as professional photographers and businessmen. In 1855, Martin married Barbara Fabing of Fremont, Ohio.

Hazeltine traveled widely, photographing the scenery in Yosemite Valley and other places in California, Yellowstone National Park, Alaska, Idaho, Nevada, and Oregon. During the 1860s and 1870s, he photographed primarily in California, including Yosemite, where he established a summer studio, and Mendocino County, where he and his family occasionally wintered. In June 1876, Hazeltine joined forces with his former competitor, John James Reilly, Yosemite's first resident photographer, and the two agreed to form a monopoly for photographic services in the Valley. In the winter of 1877, Hazeltine lost two of his six children to smallpox.

Hazeltine marketed many of his images as stereographs, both on his own and through publishers such as John P. Soule of Boston, Thomas Houseworth and Company of San Francisco, Kilburn Brothers of New Hampshire, and John S. Moulton of Massachusetts. He issued many of his images in stereograph sets, titled in various ways, including "Yo-Semite Valley, California." He also assembled sets of stereographs advertising railroads, including the Southern Pacific, Union Pacific and Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, and occasionally he published the work of other photographers.

In 1878, Hazeltine began moving farther afield. He opened a photography gallery in Reno, Nevada, but by 1883 he had a shop in Boise, Idaho. Ever the itinerant photographer, Hazeltine traveled widely throughout much of his career: Alaska in 1878, Montana in 1880, Idaho and Yellowstone Park in 1883, and to various places in California, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington throughout the 1880s and 1890s. He visited Baker City, Oregon, in 1880 and by 1884 he had established there a companion gallery to his Boise studio. Baker City would become his home base for the rest of his life. Following a painful illness of several weeks, Hazaeltine dies at his home in Baker City on February 16, 1903. He was survived by his wife Barbara, son Leland, daughters Viola and Nea, brother George and sister Augusta Hazeltine. One of Hazeltine’s obituaries noted that he had "accumulated the largest and most valuable collection of scenic views on the Pacific coast."

References for biography:

Oregon Historical Society Research Library. "Guide to the George I. Hazeltine and Martin M. Hazeltine Photographs, 1866-circa 1920." Accessed July 3, 2012. http://nwda-db.wsulibs.wsu.edu/findaid/ark:/80444/xv55069.

Palmquist, Peter E. and Thomas R. Kailbourn. Pioneer Photographers of the Far West; A Biographical Dictionary, 1840-1865. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000.