The Breakneck Steps in Quebec City, identified on the reverse label as No. 63 in the Canadian Scenery series by L. P. Vallee, Portrait and Landscape Photographer, No. 10 St. John Street, Quebec, are documented in this stereoview from the 1860s or 1870s. The reverse further notes that at the foot of these steps was found the tomb of Samuel de Champlain, the founder of Quebec, lending this view a historical significance well beyond its value as a street scene.

The steep stone staircase descends between closely spaced commercial buildings, with multiple figures gathered on the steps at various levels including men in work clothes and hats, a woman with a child, and a man in a long coat and bowler hat standing prominently in the foreground. Shop signs and a gas street lamp are visible along the narrow passage, and the steps extend upward into the distance where additional figures are visible against the open sky.

The Breakneck Steps, known in French as l'Escalier Casse-Cou, connect the Lower Town to the Upper Town in Old Quebec and are among the oldest public stairways in North America, dating to the early French colonial period. The discovery near their base of remains believed to be those of Samuel de Champlain (1574-1635), the founder of Quebec City and a central figure in the history of New France, made this location a subject of particular historical interest during the nineteenth century.

The reverse bears the printed imprint of L. P. Vallee, Canadian Scenery series, No. 10 St. John Street, Quebec, with a pasted label reading "No. 63. Break neck steps at the foot of which was found the tomb of Champlain," and a penciled notation of "20.00."