A Piece of Southern California Train History

Los Angeles is surrounded by mountains. These mountains are part of the reason that there is so much smog in the valleys. I remember as kid driving up to Crystal Lake. On the way down we stopped at a lookout point. We were above the smog. Looking out all we could see was the top of the smog with hills popping up out of it looking like islands. We have also been up there looking out over the valleys when it was so clear that we could see Catalina Island. We were not the first people to think that going up into the mountains on a hot summer day would be a good idea. In fact, a person named Thaddeus Lowe thought it was a very good idea back in the late 1800s. His idea was to build a “tourist trap” at the top of the mountain to draw people up to enjoy themselves, each other and the view. It was called Echo Mountain and the "tourist trap" was called Echo Mountain House.What is known today as Mt. Lowe was once Oak Mountain. "Mount Lowe located above Pasadena, California is part of the San Gabriel Mountains in southern California. It was originally named Oak Mountain, but was renamed for Professor Thaddeus S.C. Lowe, who built the Mount Lowe Railway to its foot in 1896. The record of the naming was made official by Andrew McNally, the famous Chicago map printer, who promised to print "Mount Lowe" on all his maps," (see http://www.mtlowe.net/) We are going to be vising the Mt. Lowe Railway through post cards in the next few blog posts. What we will be seeing was opened on the 4th of July in 1893 and made its last run on December 5th of 1937 – a 44 and a half year run. But look at what they accomplished in that short time span! Mr. Lowe only owned the railway for a short 8 years. He had to sell it to Henry Huntington of the Pacific Electric Railway.

In 1889, David MacPherson, a former Santa Fe Railway civil engineer, planned a steam powered railroad into the mountains behind Pasadena. In 1891, MacPherson and Thaddeus Lowe, a public figure from the Civil War, incorporated the Pasadena and Mt. Wilson Railway. Land near Mt. Wilson was unavailable, so Lowe ran electic trolley cars through Altadena into Rubio Canyon. At the terminus, Lowe built a pavilion transfer station and "The Great Incline" (see: http://www.mtlowe.net/brief_history.htm) I am beginning with this post card because it shows the mountain so clearly. The title in red under the picture says that it is a view of “Mt. Lowe Div. Pacific Electric Ry., California” You won’t be able to see it on this scan, but there is a large white building on the knob to the right of the hill where this incline leads. The incline is about 3000 feet long. Echo Mountain House is where everyone is headed. Mr. Lowe and company built a powerhouse, a Chalet, the Echo Mountain House, a casino (used as a dance pavilion and dormitory), an observatory, residential car barn, gardens, gas holder, zoo and water system. "The White City on the Mountain" was world famous. [see http://www.mtlowe.net/brief_history.htm] for more details. In its later years, the Mt. Lowe Railway will add an Alpine Tavern on a wicked set of tracks farther into the mountains. The tracks and the tavern will be featured in later posts.

This post card is from the pre-March 7, 1907 era. The entire space for a message is at the bottom of the front of the card. Max has made the best of it and told his “mother and folks” that “The ride up Mt. Lowe is most beautiful and enjoyed it very much.” He wrote this card on my older brother’s birthday 45 years before he was born. It was mailed the next day, August 23rd, in 1906. This year the card turns 112 years old. The card was published by M. Rieder of Los Angeles and Dresden. Dresden is a city in Germany. In these days the postcard printers in Germany were more experienced and produced better cards than those in the United States. So, many companies relied on their German counterparts to produce the post cards that they sold. This is a black and white card and the Germans excelled at the color post card production. We will see some of those in the near future in these blogs about Mt. Lowe. M. Rieder Company existed in Los Angeles from 1901 to 1915. They mostly published post cards of scenes from the western U.S. [see http://www.metropostcard.com/publishersr1.html] for more details. They contracted their printing work out to Germany and the famous and prolific post card publisher from California, Edward H. Mitchell. An interesting little note: the words POST CARD are prominent on the top, middle of the back of the card. They have “translated” those words into POSTAL CARD and CARTE POSTALE just below in parenthesis. Max wrote this to his family who lived at 1616 East 68 Street, in Chicago, IL. I looked it up on the internet. They lived close to the Illinois-Indiana border just east of where interstates 90 and 94 come together today. If they live there today, they are a 12 block walk to the South Shore Cultural Centre.