Mt. Shasta and Black Butte are identified by the printed caption on the recto of this albumen cabinet card, photographed by I.W. Taber of San Francisco and numbered B 2119 in his commercial view series. Taber operated his celebrated Photographic Parlors at 8 Montgomery Street, San Francisco, and produced one of the most extensive landscape view catalogs on the Pacific Coast during the 1870s and 1880s.

The foreground is filled with dense sagebrush and dry grass sweeping across open high-desert terrain, while a split-rail fence traces a diagonal line through a broad valley floor toward a distant treeline of mixed conifers. Low forested hills dominate the middle distance, and the distinctive silhouette of Black Butte rises at the right horizon, with Mt. Shasta's peak visible faintly behind it to the far right. The pale open sky above occupies roughly the upper third of the composition.

Taber's view series of Northern California landscapes was widely distributed through his View Department, which advertised the largest collection of Pacific Coast scenery available at the time, including railroad, mining, and natural scenery subjects. The reverse carries a detailed printed advertisement for Taber's Photographic Parlors, listing his address and View Department holdings, with a handwritten notation in the upper left corner reading "25."