Just Little Ol' Me

I am rather disappointed about the amount of information that I can attach to this post card. It was published by Frank H. Leid out of Salt Lake City, Utah. It is post card number 1703 in his series of post cards. It is obviously a picture of the Lucin Cut-off trestle.

I have searched for information on Frank H. Leid, but can find extremely little. There is one post card on a website for sale that was also published by his company. It is a picture of a statue monument in Salt Lake City. I have only 3 in my collection that involve Frank. Two were published by him and one is one of his photographs published by H H Tammen Curio Co. His style of publishing is similar to the Detroit Photographic Co. The picture is on the card and the information about the card and the publisher is in red ink at the bottom. We can deduce from the picture that we are looking west from Midlake (the shadows on the decking tell us that). The back of the post card shows that it was probably printed in Germany. There is an eagle with spread wings over a round symbol with what looks like the letters K, E and C in it. Here is a close-up of the entire symbol followed by a very close-up of the circle with the letters. If you know anything about this I would love to hear from you. Just add it to the comment section.

It also has the message to the purchaser, “THIS SIDE IS FOR THE ADDRESS.” So, we know that this card was printed between March 1904 (when the trestle was opened) and March 1, 1907 (when you could write on the back of the cards). We can see that someone had this in an album because the corners are faded.

The reason that I chose this post card is that I think that I now possess a piece of the handrail that is shown so clearly in this picture. There is a company that purchased the trestle from the railroad and it is slowly taking the trestle apart and selling the wood. The long and short of coversations with a representative from the company, is that I sent them 24 scans of post cards of the trestle from my collection and they sent me a plank of wood (1 x 6 x 18 inches) and a spike from the trestle. That size of wood looks like it would have been part of the railing around the trestle as illustrated by this post card.

Union Pacific on the Southern Pacific?

I have written earlier about how the copyright law enforcement was not so enforced in the time of the early post card production, printing and selling. These three cards exemplify that theme. One can easily see the similarity among the three cards. The same train (except for the coloring), at the same location, going in the same direction, as seen from the same vantage point, with the same semaphore in the same position.

In the first post card we can see that the name of the train is the Overland Limited, and it is being operated by the Union Pacific Railroad. This is very interesting because the Lucin Cut-off trestle was built by the Southern Pacific Railroad. Two comments about this follow. First, the moniker “Overland Limited” has its origin in the stagecoach days. A stagecoach service between Virginia City, Nevada and Salt Lake City operated from 1861 to 1869. This service was begun by the Overland Mail Company and was ended after Wells Fargo took over the business. The Union Pacific Railroad was probably honoring the memory of the stagecoach service. Second, the original route of the Union Pacific’s Overland Limited was about 1900 miles, from Omaha, Nebraska to San Francisco. It began in 1869, the same year the stagecoach route was closed. This passenger service lasted with the Union Pacific until AMTRAK took over the long range passenger trains in 1971. In the early years, it would take sometimes over a week to complete the full journey by train. By 1906, the entire trip could be made in fewer than 60 hours (that’s two and a half days). You can see on the first card that the train is described as “The San Francisco Overland Limited” and they tell us that it is “passing over Great Salt Lake Cut Off, Utah.” They don’t mention that the Southern Pacific has partnered with the Union Pacific to allow this to happen. They just say that it is “On Line of Union Pacific”. This card is from the divided back era (1907 – 1915).

It was published by the Barkalow Brothers in Omaha, Nebraska. The Barkalow brothers were Derrick and Sydney. They began their business as news agents for the Union Pacific Railroad in 1865 which also was (and still is) headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska. At the age of 15 Sydney began his own book and stationery company with his brother. They became exclusive distributors of print material for the Union Pacific all along the UP routes. For retirement, they moved to Fort Myers, Florida. The middle post card actually names the cut-of as the “Lucin Cut-off”. It also tells us that there are 12 miles of trestle on which the trains travel to traverse the lake. The list of similarities in the pictures convinces me that they come from one photo. I went through the list in the first paragraph. There are some differences, too. The mountain that is in the horizon on the first card is missing in the second. The arms of the semaphore are painted differently. But, not much more varies between the two cards. This card was published by the Moon Book and Stationery Company. It is publication number 128 and it, too, comes from the divided back era. I do not know anything about the Moon Book and Stationery Company. I have looked, but in vain. If you know anything or find any information, I will be grateful if you send it my way. You can leave a comment in the comment section or e-mail me at froggytales@hotmail.com. The bottom post card was once a part of a set. The top edge has perforations that tell us that it was once attached to another post card. It, too, only recognized that the train we see is part of the Union Pacific: “Union Pacific Limited Train Crossing Great Salt Lake, Utah”. It is probably from the divided back era, too. On the back side it says “Union Pacific System Pictorial Post Card” and the symbol of the Union Pacific Railroad’s Overland Route is in the upper left hand corner of the card. The bottom left declares that it is the “direct and shortest route to San Francisco”. These last two cards are postally unused. The first card was mailed on September 16, 1911 at 5:30 p.m. from Omaha, Nebraska. The message on the back is from Charlie to Al in Whiting, Indiana: "I got this far or I should say to Ohaha. Having a fine trip. Best regards to all." Whiting, Indiana is on the shore of Lake Michigan just a stone's throw from the Indiana - Illinois border. So, Charlie probably went to Chicago and boarded the train there. Now he is in Nebraska on his way to hopefully somewhere warm for the winter.

What's that hole for?

I am taking a little bit of poetic license with this post. I am not going put the post cards up in the order of published first to last so that I can tell a story and hold you in suspense for a short while. The first post card is a picture of a train on a part of the Lucin cut-off. This is the landfill that leads to the trestle that cuts right across the Great Salt Lake. My post previous to this one speaks much more about the cut-off. I will let it rest here.

This post card is from the Linen Card era (1930 – 1945). It was printed by Curt Otto Teich’s company using the “C.T. Art-Colortone” method. In fact, I believe that it was the Curt Teich company under the inventive guidance of Curt Teich, that invented the Linen Card look. This particular card was printed in 1933. You can tell by the number in the bottom right of the card. It is 3A-H214. The A in the number sequence means that it was printed in the 1930s. The 3 prior to the A means that it was in 1933. The H means that it was a Linen Card printed in the Art Colortone method. There were 1656 Linen Cards printed that year. Using interpolation we can surmise that this card was printed around the middle of February in 1933. While it was printed by the Curt Teich Company, it was printed for the Deseret Book Company in Salt Lake City, Utah. The Deseret Book Company emerged from the Deseret News Bookstore and the Deseret Sunday School Union Bookstore in 1919 and formally adopted its name in 1920. Both of these Utah bookstores trace their organizational roots to George Q. Cannon, a Latter-day Saint General Authority. The bookstore is named after "deseret," a word from the Book of Mormon meaning "honeybee". By 1920 a new Deseret Book Company building was constructed in downtown Salt Lake City at site of the present ZCMI Center Mall. Ownership of Deseret Book was split between the Deseret News (70%) and the Deseret Sunday School Union (30%). See the Wikipedia website for more details about this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deseret_Book)

This particular post card has been used. It was mailed on June 21, 1939 from Brantsville, Utah to Chicago, Illinois. The faint message on the back says that the sender is “having a swell time” and that they went swimming in the Great Salt Lake. They are leaving the next day to go across the desert. You can see that there is a hole in the card on the right hand side. This is not a normal phenomenon on a post card. What could it be used for? Let’s look at the next card to find out.

You can clearly see that this card was sold with a little bag of salt attached. The bag is made out of good-quality cotton that is stitched closed across the top. There is another thick thread holding the salt bag to the grommet on the card. The words on the bag are “SALT From Great Salt Lake UTAH “. This card would have cost you extra if you mailed it with the salt bag attached. In the box to indicate where the postage stamp is to be placed, the word say that it only costs a penny to mail but, if the salt bag is attached it will cost you two cents. The senders of the previous card used up a whole three cents to mail theirs, but two cents would have been sufficient in 1939, too. This card was also printed by the Curt Teich Company. The code (also in the bottom right hand corner) indicates that it was printed in the early part of 1930. This is NOT one of the Linen Cards. The code is 68-30. The 30 indicates that the post card was printed in 1930; and, it belongs to the 68th run of that year. The records show that there were 2,934 print runs in 1930 of this numbering system. This card was probably printed very early in January of 1930.

Like the previous card, this, too was printed for the Deseret Book Company. This one, however, acknowledges that the picture is taken along the route of the Southern Pacific Railroad. There is a seal in the bottom left of the back of the card saying so. There is no message on the back of this card. This has allowed us to peak under the postage stamp, so to speak, and see the message about the increased cost in postage if you do not remove the bag of salt prior to sending the card.

Quintuplets?

I have written earlier about how the copyright law enforcement was not so enforced in the time of the early post card production, printing and selling. These five cards are a prime example of this. At a quick first glance, one could almost assume that these 5 cards are precisely the same. With an eagle eye, one can see that all the trains’ engines are right at the point between the third and fourth support piles – every one of them! The piles are reflected in the water on each card, too. Each engine is pulling exactly one baggage car and 5 passenger cars. These cards sure do have a lot in common.

With a closer look, one sees that two of the trains have smoke coming out of the stacks. These same two cards have mountains, which are different from the others and it looks like they have actual clouds, instead of the white wisps in the skies of the other cards. Upon even closer inspection one can see that the fourth and fifth cards have the same printing flaw. Just above the baggage car on each card is a little zig-zag in darker blue ink against the white wisps. .

Then as we look at the titles on the cards we see that they are definitely not identical cards – but we also see that they were probably either printed by the same company with slight variations for one reason or another; or the picture was sold to another printer; or another printer boldly picked up the picture but avoided copyright infringement by changing just one small thing. I am in favor of “the same company printed it with slight variations” theory.The top card’s title “1574 Lucin Cut-Off, Great Salt Lake, Utah – Southern Pacific” is printed in red ink. It was the Southern Pacific Railroad that built the trestle after taking over the Central Pacific Railroad. In fact, four out of the five cards remind us that the Southern Pacific is in charge of the trestle. The top card is the oldest, having been printed before March 1, 1907.

The back of the post card contains the ubiquitous “THIS SIDE IS EXCLUSIVELY FOR THE ADDRESS” phrase. It was published by the Gray News Company. They existed from 1906 to 1922 and operated out of Salt Lake City, Utah. There is not indicator of who printed the card The other four cards are from the divided back era (1907 – 1915). The second card ignores the Southern Pacific as well as the publisher of the post card and the printer. Maybe they are trying to make up for this by adding smoke coming out of the engine. There is a very distinctive American flag wrapped around the horizontal flag pole pointing left in the top center of the back of the card. I am not certain about what this means about indicating the printer or the publisher. There is more to come about this on a later card. The next card also has the smoke coming out of the engine.

It has the same train, the same clouds, the same mountains. The only difference is that the card’s title is at the bottom and in dark green ink. It says,”1574 Lucin Cut-off, Great Salt Lake, Utah” then over to the right side it reminds us of the import role the Southern Pacific played: “On Southern Pacific Ry.” The back of the post card is exactly the same as post card number two, except (so it isn’t exactly) the ink used in a very dark blue. The fourth post card is similar to the previous two. It has the same back as card number two in the same golden colored ink. But, like card number three, the title is at the bottom and in dark ink. The number is off to the left of the card, the Lucin Cut-off is centered and the Southern Pacific reference is on the far right of the card. This presents itself in a much more balance than the previous three cards. The printer is getting better at layouts.

The title at the bottom of the last post card is no longer spread out in a balanced presentation. They have rejoined the number of the card to the description but they left the Southern Pacific reference off to the right. The great thing about this post card is that there is a publisher’s name on the back: the card was published by the Williamson-Haffner Company (WHC).

This company was very short lived. They were in Denver Colorado from 1905 to 1910. I am hoping that the connection on the back of the card between the flag draped horizontal flag pole and the WHC is more than a coincidence and more than just a printer’s indication but a direct connection to the publisher. I am still trying to trace the printer. I have many post cards with this flag and not much else on the back. Knowing the printer will make it easier to understand the cards better. This particular post card was mailed on November 17, 1908 at 3:30 in the afternoon from Ogden, Utah – the eastern terminus of the Lucin Cut-off. I love the message: “Don’t know where I’m going but am on my way.” I see that the word “Dearest” has been crossed out. I wonder if this is some kind of hint to Miss Lily Bridges by the sender. Once he returned to Walker, Missouri did he propose to her or ask her to be “his girl”? I see that he got the county in which Walker sits correct. However, he spelled the name of the city wrong – he added an “s” at the end. I did a bit of research on the name, Miss Lily Bridges. Her name shows up in Marriage Book Q on page 51 of the marriage registry of Vernon County in Missouri. She was married in 1926 to a man named John Harley in Nevada, Missouri – just a start and a stop southwest of Walker. Here is some sort of up to date information about Walker, Missouri. The population in July 2009 was 274 people, 138 of whom were males. The median age of the residents was 35.8 years old 4 months younger than that of the state of Missouri. The estimated household income was $31, 261 and the estimated cost of a house or condo was $44,766. If you were renting, you paid $433 per month.

Party Time!! in Utah

When the Central Pacific Railroad was building its part of the Transcontinental Railroad, it was going through Utah when it met the Union Pacific coming from the other direction. You may be familiar with a rather large lake in northern Utah, the Great Salt Lake. In order to go through Utah economically and quickly, both railroads went north around the lake and they met at Promontory, Utah straight north of the middle of the lake. This is where the Golden Spike was driven into the railroad tie to symbolize the completion of the transcontinental railroad. A telegraph message was sent at 12:47 PM on May 10, 1869 "Done".

You may recongize the picture on this post card. It is only a replica. This post card has a copyright of 1999 on it. This route through Utah was used to get across The United States of America for 35 years. It was used even before Utah became the 45th state on January 4, 1896. The Central Pacific Railroad was eventually leased to the Southern Pacific Railroad starting on April 1, 1885. The Southern Pacific (Willaim Hood, Chief Engineer and Edward Harriman, CEO) decided to go straight across the lake and by-pass several dangerous curves and steep grades as well as 43 miles of travel. The shortcut, known as the Lucin Cut-off, runs between Ogden, Utah on the east side and Lucin. It was built between February, 1902 and March, 1904. The first pilings were set into the lake in August of 1902 and the last pile was driven on October 26, 1903. The cut-off was a combination of a rock-filled causeway and a 12 mile long wooden trestle. It cost $4,000,000 to build.

This post card was mailed on Jan 18, 1907. It is a commemoration of the ceremony to open the Lucin Cut-off. The top left picture is a shot from on the trestle looking across the lake. The large picture is the gathering of the required dignitaries (Misters Hood and Harriman, not doubt are in there) to make the opening official. The bottom left is a profile view of the 12 mile long trestle. And the bottom right is of 4 people floating in the Great Salt Lake. Like the Dead Sea, the minerals make the water so dense that people can easily float on the water. In the middle of the trestle was the aptly named "Mid-Lake Station". Midlake began when trestle construction started in 1902. Temporary camps for the workers were built at intervals along the trestle, and one of them, Camp 23, was located at the later site of Midlake. While the other camps disappeared with the completion of the trestle, Camp 23, renamed Midlake, remained as a train order station and maintenance of way facility. It closed in 1945 when the Southern Pacific changed over to cenralized trafic control from the semaphore-block style traffic control. Imagine growing up in the middle of the lake. That is what this next post card is showing to us. The square picture is a picture of Mid-Lake, Utah.

These previous two post cards were published by The Albertype Company of Brooklyn, NY. The top card is from the pre-March 1, 1907 era and this one is from shortly thereafter. The back contains the reminders on the right side of the card: "This space is for the Address only" and on the left side: "This space may be used for Correspondence" The Southern Pacific continued to use this right of way until into the early 1960s. The trestle may have been near the end of its life as a trestle as the 1960s started, but its story had just begun. The 1960s through the early 1990s brought over thirty years of well-deserved rest from the heavy train traffic of its almost 60 years of service. Nature was not so kind. The wind and the waves accompanying the intermittent fierce storms on the Great Salt Lake began to take their toll on the trestle, which was no longer being maintained as it had been when it was the railroad's only means of crossing the lake. Piece by piece, handrail and deck materials were broken free and blown or washed into the lake. In not too many years, the trestle was no longer fit to be even a back-up means of crossing the lake.

This post card is also from the pre-March 1, 1907 era and was printed by the Albertype Company. All three of these cards are on very good quality card stock and have not lost any of their strength, rigidity or stiffness over the past century - WOW!! that is a long time. "The trestle was given new life in the early 1990s. In March of 1993, Cannon Structures, Inc. obtained salvage rights to the trestle from T.C. Taylor Co., Ltd., which had previously acquired these rights from Southern Pacific. Cannon soon thereafter established its Trestlewood Division, through which it has been salvaging, remanufacturing and marketing the wood from the trestle ever since." (from Trestlewood.com website)

Fred Harvey and His Post Cards

Fred Harvey (June 27, 1835–February 9, 1901) has done wonders to promote the beauty of the Arizona desert. In 1878 Fred Harvey established a chain of “Harvey House” restaurants and hotels across the southwestern United States. Much was done to market the region including publishing large series of post cards depicting Native Americans and local scenery. Harvey's partnership with the Santa Fe began in 1876 when he struck a deal with Charles Morse, the superintendent of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad (Santa Fe). In 1897 Harvey took over the news stands for the railroad and distributed post cards. A large amount of post cards were produced depicting the Arizona scenery and the Santa Fe trains as they passed through. Fred Harvey himself provided some of the images for these cards until his death in 1901. When Fred Harvey died there were 47 Harvey House restaurants, 15 hotels, and 30 dining cars operating on the Santa Fe Railway.

The first post card picture is of a bridge then a tunnel. These are at Johnson’s canyon; about half way between Flagstaff and Seligman, Arizona, just west of Williams where one can take a steam train ride to the Grand Canyon. Santa Fe used the steeper Johnson Canyon route, opened in 1882, for east-west rail travel and the gentler "Coconino Cut" route to the north for west-east rail travel through to the early 1960's. The line was finally abandoned in 1962 and the rails removed when the "Coconino Cut" route (a much gentler grade) was double-tracked. It is quite a hike, but one can still get to the tunnel to see the old route. The middle post card is an image of a Santa Fe diesel cruising on the main line of the Santa Fe railroad through Crozier Canyon in northwestern Arizona. Today, you can still take pictures similar to this one. The canyon is still accessible from Route 66. The website: http://www.northamericanrails.com/bnsf_transcon_across_az_seligman_sub/bnsf_-_seligman_sub_-_crozier_area gives you directions of how to get close to the Santa Fe main line to take great pictures of trains. The bottom post card is of Canyon Diablo. I am very familiar with this area. We used to spend our summers exploring northern Arizona when I was growing up. Canyon Diablo is very close to the “world famous” Meteor Crater. It is about half way between Flagstaff and Winslow. It, too, is on the main line of the Santa Fe railroad. Canyon Diablo was given its name by a Lieutenant Whipple in 1853. This canyon presented such an obstacle to his historic thirty-fifth parallel survey party that he wanted to let all that followed know what he thought of it. Devil's Canyon was appropriately named. Other survey parties, like Whipple's, had to go miles out of their way just to cross the canyon. The railroad tried to span the canyon in 1881 but Canyon Diablo once more lived up to its name. Evidently the timber parts of the railroad bridge were pre-assembled elsewhere and the plans were misread. The bridge came up several feet short! Today is has a modern steel bridge and it is used by the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad on a regular basis.

On the back side of the cards to the top left we can see Fred Harvey’s signature advertising that there are hotels, shops and restaurants waiting to serve our needs. Between 1901 and 1932 the Company contracted all their cards with the Detroit Publishing Company. These cards have an H prefix before their identification number, which you can see on the front of the cards as part of their titles. After Detroit closed, many of Harvey’s cards were contracted out to Curt Teich. These three post cards are printed by Curt Otto Teich. You can see the evidence at the bottom middle of the post cards. By this time, Curt Teich’s company had settled on a convenient way to date and number their post cards. The numbers for these cards are from top to bottom: 1B-H752, 1B-H751 and 1B-H752. The 1B indicates the year the post card was printed. B indicates that it was printed in the 1940s. The 1 indicates that it was specifically 1941. The H- indicates that the post card was printed using the “Art Colortone” method. Most post card collectors will recognize these as the “linen” post cards. In 1941 there were 2693 different pictures on these types of post cards printed by The Teich Company. Through a bit of math we can see that these cards were printed somewhere in the beginning of April of that year.

Dear Mother

One of the best things I like about my post card collection is the history that it contains. Most of the steam engines on the front of the cards no longer ply the rails. They have visited the scrap iron yards and are now reincarnated as something else... make you wonder, no? The words printed on the backs of the cards inform us of what the publisher was finding important regarding the scenes on the front. This post card is of a steam engine entering southern California - you can tell because the mandatory orange tree is on the right.

The marketing department at (what is now)Detroit Publishing tells us that the San Gabriel Valley is "undoubtedly the best known portion of Southern California". The beauty of the valley is that it "has been transformed from sterile desert" into something wonderful. Having lived in the desert of Arizona, I have always wondered where one could find a sterile desert. The one I grew up in was full of life, if you knew where to look. Ah, the marketing crew! They sure have a way with words, don't they? The best history on this card, though, was not written by the printer, the publisher nor the marketing department. It was written by Floyd McIntosh.

He is writing to his mother to let her know that he has arrived in North Bend, Oregon from Hilltop, Kansas. Hilltop is an unicorporated section of Greenwood County, Kansas about 6 miles as the crow flies southeast of Madison. North Bend, Oregon is about 50 miles southwest of Eugene on the Pacific coast. That is a trip of over 2000 train miles. Floyd says that "it is sure a nice place." I can only imagine going from a prairie location to the Pacific coast. The contrast must be amazing. And he made the trip in March of 1924; not yet the highlight of passenger travel on the rails. My hat is off to his parents, who let him go and to him who left his parents to go.