Visit to the Past

I blogged about the this card back on April 11, 2011. I talked about the Detroit Photographic turnign into the Detroit Publishing Company. It is a Santa Fe train crossing the desert from Las Vega to Los Angeles.

Today, I have in my possession a copy of this card. This is the first time that I have seen a post card in my collection that has been so obviously copied. You can see that it was probably printed in the "White Border" era. If you look carefully at the edges you can see an iside border (from the original card) and an outside border. The same number from the orginal card is also in the lower left hand corner: 5512.

This is literally, a copy. It looks like someone put this postcard on a stand and took a picture of it then started printing copies of their own post cards. Whoever it was, was very smart. While today we would be scandalized by such ruthless defiance of the copyright laws, back then, this was rather commonplace. The original was from pre-March 7, 1907. The white border era began when the printers discovered that they could save ink by adding a nice, white border around their pictures. This one has a white border and some serrated edges. It looks like it was connected to other cards that you could tear off an mail either several over time to the same person, or several at the same time to many people.

There is only one thing that might indicate who the company was that copied the original. In the section above where the message is to be written is a very "trademark" looking design with the words Post Card incorporated into it. Perhaps the blue dividing line and the two blue squares where the stamp is to be placed are also part of the "trademark". If they are, I have not been able to trace either the printer nor the publisher.

Raton Pass on the Santa Fe Railway

I am beginning this series of cards with a comparison of the same location several years apart. The first card is a picture of the entrance to Raton Tunnel - opened on Sept 1, 1879 by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Company. It is says at the bottom of the card that it is the highest point on the Santa Fe at 7,500 feet above sea level. It is actually closer to 7,600 feet.

This card was published by Fred Harvey. The date on the back is not extremely clear but I imagine that it was mailed on November 11, 1910. The tunnel is located about 100 miles northeast of Santa Fe, New Mexico on the Colorado and New Mexico border; there is a post at the east end of the tunnel entrance to let you know that you have entered New Mexico. From all of my searching, the best I can figure out is that the trains coming out of this tunnel are bound for the West. I found a website that says that the Santa Fe rails followed the “Old Santa Fe Trail” up and through the Raton Pass. Being a rather steep grade, Santa Fe built some switchbacks to get up the hill, then decided that a funnel would be much better. This tunnel is 2,041 feet long, 19 feet high, and 14 feet wide. It was sealed up in 1949 no longer to be used because…

This next card shows the tunnel after the second line was added in 1909. The tunnel has been twinned. The new one is 2,678 feet long. It reduced the grade of the rail line from 3.5 to 3%. This postcard is printed by the Detroit Publishing Company. They printed all of Fred Harvey’s cards using the copyrighted “PHOSTINT” method between 1901 and 1932. At the bottom of the line that divides the address from the message are the letters XXII – I wonder if this is a code for being printed in 1922???

A Visit to California

This post is about a fascinating train route in southern California. It took people from Pasadena to the top of Mt. Lowe between the years of 1893 and 1936 - just over 40 years.

The card at the top of this stack is what piqued me interest in this series of post cards. Look at the construction of that car!! I now have 57 cards in my collection and it is still growing. The amazing this is that I lived for over 20 years in the San Gabriel Valley near where this railroad operated; yet, until I started collecting these cars, I had never heard of this railroad. Mt. Lowe was named after Thaddeus Lowe, whose money built the Mount Lowe Railway. The original name of the mountain was Oak Mountain but a cartographer started naming it Mount Lowe on all his maps and, with the name of the railroad calling it Mt. Lowe, the name changed. This is interesting because the original route that Professor Lowe wanted to follow would have taken the traveler to what is today called Mt. Wilson. You can learn an awful lot about the history of Mt. Lowe Railway’s development by just typing in “Mt. Lowe Railway history” in your web browser. The second card shows Horse Shoe Curve; the first leg of the journey on Mt. Lowe took the passenger from Pasadena, through Altadena to Rubio Canyon. The passenger then transferred to “The Great Incline” (in the next set of post cards) and travelled up to the Observatory and the Tavern that awaited to cool off the hot traveler in the cooler high altitudes with shade from oak trees. The third card shows two things: one, it does snow in southern California and second, the train operated even in winter. The tavern had a very large fire place to keep winter travelers warm.

Back to my interest in the first card: sometimes businesses purchased postcards and used them to advertise their wares. This one is one of the very few in my collection that does just that. It is a fruit company that wants to sell 24 cans of fruit for $4.75. This is happening before March 1, 1907. One can tell by the appearance of the back of the card without the advertising. M. Rieder, the publisher of the postcard, was in business from 1901 to 1915 so this card is from somewhere between 1901 and 1907. The backs of these cards are shown for those who are interested. They range in dates from pre-March 1, 1907 to August 23, 1930 – only 6 more years left in the life of the railroad.

These next two cards show two more aspects of the railway. The one on the left shows one of the later developments in the railroad. It is called the Granite Gate on the Alpine Extension. The builders had to dynamite through granite to make this opening for the car. You can see that the construction of the car is similar to the one in the first post card.

The handwritten date on the card is November of 1904. It was never mailed, but, you can see that it is from pre-March 1, 1907. The second card was mailed on August 23, 1906. It was written on my older brother’s birthday, the day before but almost 50 years before he was born. It shows “The Great Incline”. Parked under the station is the car that brings the passengers up this far.

The last card shows one of the reasons why people flocked to the Mt. Lowe Railway. It is a scene from in front of the Alpine Tavern.

There is not a lot to say about this card, but I want to show it because I will be investigating my collection of post cards of Santa Fe trains. This is a map of the Santa Fe Route. I am not sure what year it was produced so I don’t even know how accurate the map is regarding how much more was to be added before they were absorbed by the Burlington Northern. It is worth pointing out that there is a subtle marketing ploy being used here to sell more post cards. Notice the little rectangle in the bottom left corner. It says, “I am at the place marked X today” then there is a space for the traveler to write the month and date then a “19” and another space for the traveler to fill in the year. Imagine buying a pocketful of these and sending them home or to a friend to allow them to follow your journey by train. It would have worked on me. In 1993 I took the train from Los Angeles to Washington D.C. I would have been a person who purchased these and sent them to family and friends so they could follow along my journey.

As you turn over the card, you see that this particular card was not a marketing ploy but a gift to the members of the Armed Forces who were travelling by train. They could then let their families know where they were as they were being shipped from one location to another. No guarantees, but this dates the card to probably the 1940s.

My Oldest Card

This week, I received in the mail, the oldest post card that is in my collection. While it is not obvious that this is a train post card, it belongs in my collection. The two pictures on the front of the card are of train stations and there are little trolley cars in front of both buildings. And, trolleys are part train so they are in my collection categorized under either “Electric” or “Special Cards”. The building on the left is the Philadelphia and Reading (pronounced redding)Railroad (We usually just refer to it as the Reading Railroad as in the Monopoly game) Company’s terminal that was opened in 1893. The building on the right hand side is the station for the Pennsylvania Railroad (P.R.R.). The first half of the station, with the grayish roof, was completed in 1881; the rest of the building became operational in 1893.

At this location: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_Company Wickipedia has a history of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad. The Reading Company Technical and Historical Society can be found by going to this location: http://www.readingrailroad.org/ The Pennsylvania Railroad is at this location: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Railroad The Pennsylvania Railroad Technical and Historical Society at this location: http://www.prrths.com/ has some interesting writing about the PRR.

This card was given out (not sure why, but it is the 5th anniversary of the completion of both buildings) by the Philadelphia Press on Sunday, January 16, 1898. That makes this card 114 years old! It was printed by George S. Harris & Sons. By 1898 George had died and his sons had taken the business to New York where they merged with several other companies to form the American Lithograph company. Notice on the back that this is technically NOT a post card. It is a Mail Card. Until May 19, 1898 The United States Postal Office was the only “company” allowed to print Postal Cards and to print the term “post card” on them. Then, Congress passed the Private Mailing Card Act which allowed private firms to print and publish cards. The law said that the words "Private Mailing Card" had to be printed on the cards produced by private businesses. The nice thing about this law was that private mailing cards cost one cent to mail instead of the two cent letter rate being charged at that time by the Post Office. But, still, only the Post Office was allowed to print the words "Post Card" on the back of post cards. Private printers added such terms as Mail Card, Souvenir Card, etc.

The Crevice in the Royal Gorge

Of these three cards that look similar, the top one is probably the oldest. It is printed and published by the Detroit Publishing Company using their exclusive "PHOSTINT" process. A bit of history: Two partners, William A. Livingstone, Jr., a publisher and Edwin H. Husher a photographer, started the Detroit Photographic Company in, of all places, Detroit, Michigan. They purchased the exclusive rights in the United States to a Swiss method of turning black and white photographs into colour prints. The company expanded and changed its name from Detroit Photographic to Detroit Publishing. Unfortunately, the company went into receivership in 1924. This means that this post card is from between March 1, 1907 (beginning of the divided back era) and 1924. If you look at their catalogue of prints and interpolate the number on this card: 12338 you can assume that this card was printed around 1908 or 1909. The bottom two cards are from the same printer: HH Tammen (I've talked about them in some recent posts). This will explain why the pictures look so similar and have the same numbering and titles.

And, even though the publishers on the side of back of the cards have different names, they are the same company. The Van Noy-Interstate Company canged its name to just the Interstate Company in 1926 (two years after Detroit Publishing went under). The company began operations in 1914 and after some mergers and purchasing of other businesses became the Van Noy-Interstate in 1917. It became the Interstate Company in 1926. These cards are good examples of the White Border era. It lasted from about 1915 to 1930.