More Views of the Granite Gate

These are three more views of the Granite Gate. The top two post cards are the exact same picture. All three views give us an idea of just how narrow the gate was.

A person on each side of the trolley car can reach out and touch the sides of the mountain pass. In fact, when one looks very carefully at the third post card, one can conclude that it is actually a corruption of the first two. The trees in the picture have not changed. The trolley is at the exact same location, stopped for the camera. The two people touching the sides of the mountain are in the exact same pose. The only real difference is that the trolley now has some printing across the front of it, the fringed top is now solid wood and one person on the left side of the trolley is missing. All of these could easily have been done to the picture at the time of the printing of the third card. The words on the first post card are: “Granite Gate, Mt. Lowe, California Elevation 4200 Feet”. We can see that it is printed across the sky in red ink. There must have been a very severe earthquake in the years between the printing of this card and the second post card. The Granite Gate has gained 600 feet of elevation! The words on the first post card are: “Granite Gate, Mt. Lowe, California Elevation 4800 Feet”. The third post card avoids trying to correct the error. It simply says: “GRANITE GATE, MT. LOWE, CALIFORNIA”. The first two post cards are from the “divided back” era. While it is obvious on the front that they are both using the same picture, it is not obvious on the back that they are from the same publisher.

The first post card was printed by the Van Ornum Colorprint Company. They were in Los Angeles, California from 1908 to 1921. They printed post cards mostly of the Southern California scenery. So, we can determine that this post card is, at the youngest, 91 years old if it had been the last card printed by them. The oldest that is can be is 104 years old, if it had been the first card printed by them. It was published by the M. Kashower Company. This company existed in Los Angeles from 1914 to 1934. They published mostly comic cards, holiday greetings, and view-cards of southern California. With this in mind, the oldest the card can now be is 98 years old. At the bottom of the card is the number 570. I would imagine that this is the number of the print job. Unfortunately, we don’t know how many print jobs per year were run so it doesn’t help us to age the card. The second post card tells us absolutely nothing about the printer or the publisher. It does show that the Mt. Lowe promoters had settled on their logo: a bear (also found on the California state flag) overlooking the San Gabriel Valley. WE do know that it is from some time between 1907 and about 1915, which is the approximate date range of the “divided back” era. The third post card is from the “white border” era. This era lasted from about 1915 to 1930. As you can see, it, too, has the Mt. Lowe logo on it. On the left side of the card is the name of the publishing company: E. C. Kropp. We have seen this company involved in publishing Mt. Lowe post cards in the past blog postings. What I would like to point out here, which I have not done in the past few postings, is for you to look at the rectangle where the postage stamp is to be placed. In the top, left corner is the letter E; in the top, right the letter C; in the bottom, left is the letter K; and, in the bottom right are the letters Co. This post card is print job number 28645 as indicated by the numbers in the top center of the post card.