Drumheller Fountain erupts in a tall, arcing column of white water that rises toward the snow-capped crown of Mount Rainier, the two vertical forms aligned so precisely that the composition reads as intentional collaboration between campus landscape architect and volcano. The dormant stratovolcano fills the upper half of the frame in extraordinary glacial detail, its summit and ridgelines rendered in cool blue-white against a clear Pacific Northwest sky, while the surrounding canopy of Pacific Northwest conifers and the manicured hedgerow foreground of the UW campus ground the entire spectacular view in its very specific Seattle geography. The secondary fountain jets arc outward in the basin below like a crown supporting the central plume.
Few campus photographs anywhere in the country offer this particular combination of human-made elegance and geological magnificence in a single perfectly centered frame. This is the quintessential University of Washington image, the one that reminds students and alumni alike exactly why this campus occupies one of the most extraordinarily sited pieces of educational real estate in America. It belongs on the wall of every Husky who has ever stood at this fountain and looked south.
