Detroit Photographic Company, also known as Detroit Publishing Company and Detroit Photochrom Company, was one of the world's major image publishers from 1895 to 1924, and the first and only entity in the United States to license the Photochrom process. Once the Detroit Photographic Company got its hands on the approach, the company was able to mass market photographic prints, postcards, and other materials. 

Photolithography, and more specifically Photochrom, the process by which this image was made, involves hand-painting parts of a black and white photographic negative, then transferring that image onto a lithographic plate using colored gels. This then produced a colored print. The photographer would either rely on imagination or, more often, take detailed notes about the colors they felt were important to represent in a given image when undertaking the detailed process.

During its some 30 years of business, Detroit Photographic Co. amassed an archive of over 40,000 negatives. Everything from postcards to panoramas to fine art prints were created and sold by mail order, door to door salesmen, and in retail locations: American history was both made and preserved.