The American photographer and stereoscopic view publisher Benjamin West Kilburn was born in Littleton, New Hampshire, USA on 10 December 1827. After his education he became a partner with his father in the Josiah Kilburn and Son foundry, producers of stoves.

Kilburn was a mountaineer, and he had climbed on Mount Washington in New Hampshire, in Colorado, and in the Sierra Nevada of California, and in Yosemite. Meanwhile, his brother, Edward Kilburn (1830-1884), was learning photography from a local daguerreotypist. The stereoviews taken by the Kilburn Brothers date from about 1865 and they became famous for landscape images of early North American state, provincial, and national parks and for the visual record of the great migrations at the end of the 19th century.

Edward Kilburn retired from the partnership in about 1877 and the new B. W. Kilburn and Company brought many changes in stereoscopic technology and in the audience for the views.

He was the world's most extensive manufacturer of stereoscopic views from 1890 - 1910. He also developed early fire-fighting apparatus, and was involved in search and rescue on Mount Washington.

Benjamin West Kilburn died on 15 January 1909 in Littleton