For My Sister, Kathy

The oldest of my three sisters in Ohio living with cancer throughout her body in a hospice care facility. When I called her on Christmas Day she asked what the address of this blog was because she wanted to see it. Well, Kathy, here it is... and this posting is for you. I thought I would provide you with some nostalgia from when we were children. I have a dozen post cards from Knott's Berry Farm. I won't scan all of them because some of them are only different on the back.

In this set the top post card is a "real photo" card. Unfortunately, the back tells is nothing about the paper or process used. It just tells us that it is from the "Ghost Town Pitchur Gallery" i.e. their souvenir shop. The train in the picture was brought into Knott's Berry Farm by Walter Knott from Colorado. It used to be a real operating train on the Denver and Rio Grande narrow gauge railroad. They still run trains on the line in Colorado today - just not this particular one. It now operates in Southern California.

As a family, we would go to Knott's Berry Farm quite often. We were a family of 6 children and two adults who moved to California from Arizona in 1959 because our parents thought the education was better. Our dad (the only "bread winner") took a cut in pay and a demotion in "rank" for us. To entertain the children at a very reasonable rate, our parents chose to take us to Knott's Berry Farm rather than Disneyland. Each visit had to include a ride on this train. The picture at the bottom of this set (above) is probably from the 1960s, when we visited often. Sometimes, after the train made the loop it would be stopped by train robbers who would, in turn, be stopped by the sheriff. After the gun battle, one of the robbers would be laying on the ground. The Undertaker would come out with a wheel barrow to haul the dead man away. They asked for children to help the Undertaker and it became quite a comedy routine. This is summarized in the post card below. You can see two little cowpokes holding the robbers at bay.

The caption on the back of the post card says, "The Ghost Town Marshal at Knott's Berry Farm gets a big assist from two of his 'deputies'. They have just captured the bandits who robbed the narrow gauge passenger train, the Ghost Town & Calico Railroad."

This post card was printed for Knott's Berry Farm by Dexter Press, Inc. out of West Nyack, New York. Thomas A. Dexter began Dexter Press, a one-man shop in Pearl River, New York, in 1920. With the production of the very first natural color post card in 1932, Tom Dexter established a tradition of innovation and craftsmanship that would be associated with the Dexter name for years to come. While all the photochromes printed by Dexter boor the words Genuine Natural Color they went through a variety of phases. Their early photochromes went under the name Dextone and tended to be flat and somewhat dull in appearance. As years went by their optical blending techniques improved producing richer and more varied colors. I don't think that they are still in business today.

This final post card is a good example of the history of Knott's Berry Farm.

You can actually find the history on their website. The park actually did begin as a berry farm. Walter Knott helped to popularize the boysenberry and his wife made jams and pies out of it. Then, one day she fed some visitors a chicken dinner for 65 cents. Today, they still serve chicken dinners in a very, very large restaurant. Check out their website at www.Knotts.com

Kathy, I hope that you enjoyed this little trip down memory lane. I seem to have Knott's Berry Farm connected to you and Marcel, too. Enjoy your good memories. I love you.

Real Photo Post Cards

Having Fun

These three post cards are pictures of people interacting with what looks like a car from a passenger train. In reality, they are all picture backgrounds and foregrounds to give the illusion that the person is at the train. They are souvenirs of their visit to Denver, Seattle and an unknown city in the form of a post card that they can mail to their loved ones back home.

The top left one is the brainchild of one H. Schwartz of Denver, Colorado. The sign says that it was taken at his Lakeside Park studio in Denver. He also had another studio at 320 17th Street in Denver.

The top right one refers to a train that goes from Seattle to Spokane in Washington State: the North Coast Limited. The North Coast Limited was a named passenger train started by the Northern Pacific Railway between Chicago and Seattle. It began operations on April 29, 1900 and made its final run as a Burlington Northern Railroad train on May 1, 1971.

The top post card, in the scan here to the lower right, is the back of the Schwartz card. On the left side of the card is the two addresses of his studios. In the corner where the stamp is placed it tells us that the paper used for the picture is of the PMO brand. PMO was used between 1907 and 1915. All four triangles in the corners are pointing up. I am not sure if this is similar to AZO paper symbols, but if it is, that means this card was printed between 1904 and 1918. If there is no correlation it is from between 1907 and 1915.

The middle card, from Seattle, is also printed on PMO paper. The top two triangles are pointing up and the bottom two are pointing down. Again, if there is a correlation between PMO and AZO papers, that puts the years of this post card between 1918 and 1930. But, PMO paper was only used between 1907 and 1915.

PMO belongs to the category of Chloride Prints - These silver chloride papers in a gelatin emulsion were much faster than traditional papers that required sunlight exposure. They became known as gaslight papers because of their ability to be exposed indoors under gaslight.

They produced a good tonal range with high detail. They were often toned a warm brown to avoid their natural red to purplish brown color. These papers were sold in heavy weights with preprinted backs for specifically creating real photo postcards. (from the Metropolitan Post Card Club of New York City website)

The third post card is printed on AZO paper. Again, from the Metropolitan Post Card Club of New York City website: Gelatin Prints – “These chloride papers were made with very small particles of silver suspended in a gelatin emulsion. They tend to be vulnerable to contamination and can easily deteriorate. They were much faster than collodion based papers and were able to be exposed indoors under gaslight lamps (gaslight paper), but they remained slow enough to be used only in contact printing. Its ease of use made it the most popular paper on the market for real photo postcards. They were manufactured with postcard backs.” This post card’s triangles tell us it was printed between 19048 and 1918.

Calming Dawn

The Royal Gorge is a 10 mile long canyon in Colorado carved out by the Arkansas River. It is not only a beautiful canyon, it was such a potential short cut for two railroads that they came to “war” over the track rights. On April 19, 1878, a hastily assembled construction crew from the Santa Fe began grading for a railroad just west of Canon City in the mouth of the gorge. The D&RG whose end of track was only ¾ of a mile from Canon City raced crews to the same area, but were blocked by the Santa Fe graders in the narrow canyon. By a few hours they had lost the first round in what became a struggle between the two railroads that would be known as the Royal Gorge War. After a long legal battle that ended in the U.S. Supreme Court, on April 21, 1879, the D&RG was granted the primary right to build through the gorge that in places was wide enough at best for only one railroad. On May 7, 1879 the first excursion train traveled through the Royal Gorge.

This is a picture of the canyon decades later. As you can see, things are much calmer. A lone steam engine is pulling its passenger up the canyon toward their destination.

I can give approximate dates to the age of the card. It is a card from the divided back era, so it is from between 1907 and 1915: around one hundred years old!

I cannot tell you who printed or published the card. The only hint about this is a beautiful scroll work on the back to highlight the words Post Card. If any of you know anything about who is connected to this scroll work,

I will be greatly appreciative if you let me know. This will fill the gaps on many of the post cards in my collection.

Two More Almost Twins

These two post cards look very much alike. The picture is the same. It certainly doesn’t look like the same picture, but it is. Only the colors are different. Starting at the left, bottom of the card we see that the number of the trolley is the same; in the left it is green and in the right it is brown. The same lady in the same pose is wearing two colors in the left and only blue on the right. Her gentleman friend is wearing a white or yellow hat, depending on which card you choose to look at. The lady in the bottom right has also changed outfits. She is in the same position but wearing two different outfits. Her hat hasn’t changed shape but, it, too, has changed colors. In the middle of the card the car on the incline has not moved; that must have made it easier to change the paint scheme from pink to white!

Of course, all they have done here is use the same black and white photograph and when it was sent off to the lithographer, adjust the color on its second trip.

The card on the right is the original use of the photo. It is from the times when you could only write an address on the back of the card (top scan of these two backs).

There is a rubber stamp in the bottom right hand corner that says it was received (it doesn’t say from where or where it was received) on June 13, 1908. It was published by the Adolph Selige Company, which had offices in St. Louis, Leipzig and Berlin. According to the Metropolitan Postcard Club of New York, the Adolph Selige Company was a “publisher of predominantly mid-Western view-cards, humor, and images of Western themes. They also produced a variety of scenes for other publishers under the trade name Seliochrom.”

The card on the left (bottom scan of these two backs) is from a later time period. It is from between 1907 and 1915. This is known as the divided back era. This was the first time that the writer of the post card could add a message. The back was divided into two segments; the message could go on the left and the address was written on the right side. This post card is from the Newman Post Card Company which began in 1907 – just after the divided back era began. Also from the Metropolitan Postcard Club: “A publisher and printer of lithographic postcards, mostly views of southern California, with some cards of Hawaii and Nevada and the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition. They were related to the O. Newman Company and were acquired by H.S. Crocker in the 1960’s.” Despite being centered in Los Angeles, California, this post card was also printed in Germany.

Almost Twins

These two post cards look exactly alike. The picture is the same; the wording at the bottom is the same. They are both pictures of the top of Pike’s Peak. The wording says it is the “Summit of Pike’s Peak, Altitude 14,147 Feet” on both cards. They both indicate that they are copyrighted. The space to the right is the same and for the same purpose – for the sender to write a message.

What is the difference? Let’s play “I Spy”! The words on the card to the left are smaller. The picture and words are just a bit lower on the card. Now let’s play “I Feel”. The card on the right is actually embossed. If you run your fingers over the card, you can feel the indentations.

Turning the post cards over, they look very similar, too. They both say “POST-CARD.” at the top and remind everyone that “THIS SIDE IS EXCLUSIVELY FOR THE ADDRESS.” in accord with the government standards.

There is no indicator as to who the printer or publisher is. I published the one on the right in my blog on October 13th last month. I received an e-mail from someone who had read the blog that the publisher was Williamson-Haffner. Unfortunately, when I responded to the e-mail I also erased the original message so I cannot give you the credit you deserve for pointing this out. The sender also told me the name of the artist – which is now unretrieveably lost.

We can tell that the post cards were printed from between 1901 and 1906. I say 1901 because it was in 1901 that the government allowed printers to change the wording from Private Mailing Card to Post Card. And I say 1906 because the post mark on the back of the card on the right was mailed in 1906. If it was printed by the Williamson-Haffner Company, then the post cards were printed in 1905. The company started that year and the postmark on the second card is from July 26, 1906.

If He Only Knew

This post card is a picture of one of the steam engines pushing a passenger car up the cog railroad toward Pike’s Peak in Colorado. The title at the bottom of the card reads: “Shady Springs Colorado Ascending Pike’s Peak, on the Cog Road.” In searching for what the Shady Springs Colorado means, all I could find was a map of Douglas County that contained a historical site called “Lucas Dairy / Shady Springs Ranch”.

It is in the southeast sector of the map, so it is northeast of Pike’s Peak – but close, so to speak. It is in the next county south – El Paso. This is definitely NOT a scientific conclusion, but I suspect some line between the two. Maybe it is the name of the passenger coach being pushed up the mountain. If you look carefully at the top, middle of the post card you can see the Summit House, the destination of the passengers in the coach.

This post card was printed by the American News Company (ANC). On the back,

in the top left corner you can see the logo of the ANC. It was printed in Germany prior to World War I. The used a process that is reflected in the logo of the ANC. The banner over a 3-leafed clover says “Poly-Chrome”. Poly-Chrome describes a post card printed in continuous tone lithography. Its colors are bright and so flat that they almost resemble screen-prints. The poly-chrome process was almost exclusively used before 1907. Other European publishers also used the same process but without the Poly-Chrome name. Prefixed A (1903-1907). This card is numbered A6447.

Cards with the Poly-chrome name were also printed in the United States during the First World War, with an M prefix and white borders, but these lithographic cards have a grained texture. They were not always published by the American News Company. As you can see, this one was published by the Colorado News Company. This post card was published by the Colorado News Company. On the left edge you can see the number of the card and the words that tell us that it was published by the Colorado News Company. It was but one of many News Companies owned by the ANC. I have post cards from the Colorado News Company, the Oregon News Company, the St. Louis News Company, and the Union News Company. These are just a few of the affiliates of the ANC.

The postmark on the card confirms that it was printed between 1903 and 1907 because it was mailed on March 5, 1907. The back of the card still says that the back is for the address only, so I suspect it was earlier in this period rather than later. Just before March 1, 1907 the printers added a phrase telling the purchasers that after March 1st a message could be included on the back of the card. This one only has a short message on the front that reads, “My dear…. Hope you are feeling as well as I am….” Because this card was mailed after March 1, 1907 the writer could have put the address on the right side of the back of the card and actually expanded the message so he could elaborate about how well he was feeling! If he only knew.

Third in a Series

The picture on this post card is of one of the steam engines pushing a passenger car up the steep incline on Mt. Washington in New Hampshire. Does this sound familiar? These are the opening words on my last two blog posts. In looking through my collection last week, I found a third G.W. Morris post card that very accurately reflects the concept that the sky on many of their cards was added in by hand.

This post card is the third in a series of G.W. Morris post cards that illustrate post card history.

The title on the front is “Jacob’s Ladder, Mt. Washington, N.H.”. This post card was mailed one year before the steam engine #9 Waumbek is to be delivered to Mt. Washington. It is going to be the last new locomotive delivered to the railway for 65 years. In 1973 the next new engine will be #10 the Colonel Teague. It is also the first engine to be built in their own shop.

This card might look strangely familiar – like the first card that I blogged about two weeks ago. Jacob’s Ladder is now brown and there are hand-drawn clouds in the sky. The picture is larger on the card, too.

This is because this is another G.W. Morris post card of the Mount Washington Steam Railway. They used the same picture as the card from two weeks ago, then, added some color and clouds.

Here is the big difference:

This post card was mailed after March 1, 1907. The message could be added to the back of the card, so the picture on the front could be enhanced. It is interesting to see that six months after the law allowing a message on the back was enacted, the sender of this card still wrote a message on the front of the card.

Hand Drawn Sky and The Missing Link

The picture on this post card is of one of the steam engines pushing a passenger car up the steep incline on Mt. Washington in New Hampshire. Does this sound familiar? These are the opening words on my last blog post. In looking through my collection, I found another G.W. Morris post card that very accurately reflects the concept that the sky on many of their cards was added in by hand. This post card was also printed in Germany.

The title on the front is “Mount Washington and Railroad”. You can see the cog running between the rails to take the train safely up to the top. And at the top, you can see the building waiting for the tourists. The building at the top is not named on the post card, but it is probably the Tip-Top House, built in 1853.

I am not as excited about this post card as I was about the one in the previous blog post. However, I am glad that I have it. It is an example of the “missing link” cards that were printed between the Private Mailing Cards congress allowed in 1898 and the cards that were the result of the new postal regulations of December 24th, 1901, the words Post Card replaced Private Mailing Card on the backs of privately manufactured cards.

cards that included a space for a message next to the address which congress allowed after March 1, 1907.

Some Very Steep Climbs

The picture on this post card is of one of the steam engines pushing a passenger car up the steep incline on Mt. Washington in New Hampshire.

The whole railway is known as the Mt. Washington Railway Company; we are looking at Jacob’s Ladder. You can see the white trestle woodwork that would have spawned the name.

A short history: Sylvester Marsh was born in New Hampshire in 1803; he worked very hard, moved to Chicago, patented a few mechanisms and got rich. When he retired he moved to Boston. While hiking Mt. Washington in New Hampshire, he was caught in some very bad weather and decided to use his ingenuity to make the trip to the top of the mountain safer for all who followed. In 1858 he applied to the state for a permit to build a steam railway up the mountain. At the same time, he applied for the patent of the cog drive system that would safely take the train to the top of the mountain. At the same time he formed the Mount Washington Steam Railway Company. In 1868 the Jacob’s Ladder section was built and finally, on July 3rd of 1869 the first trip up the mountain was made.

I have many post cards of this railway, so I will expand the story with each post card that I post on this blog.

This post card was printed in Germany (as were so many others before World War I broke out) for the publisher G. W. Morris. This company was headquartered in Portland, Maine. They published pictorial books before they reached out into field of the post card. Most of their post cards were of the Northeast United States, especially New Hampshire and Maine. On many of their post cards the sky is actually drawn in on the scene giving the post cards published by the G. W. Morris Company a distinctive and identifiable look. They started with cards printed in Germany using the continuous tone lithography method. After World War I they contracted out their halftone cards to Curt Teich. The company existed from 1901 to 1922.

Part of my excitement about this post card is not the front, but the back. It reflects the steep climb that the post card industry had to face in the early stages of its growth. It is an official “Private Mailing Card.”

These cards were the first ones that the U.S. government allowed to be printed by presses owned by private companies. They could not use the title Post Card because those were only to be printed by the U. S. government. But, by a generous act of congress on May 19, 1898 private companies were allowed to print and sell their own cards which the purchaser could actually send through the mail like a post card. One could still not write on the back of the post card; that was not allowed until March 1, 1907 through an act of another generous congress.

This post card was sent on August 18, 1905 from New Hampshire to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. But Florence Jameson must have moved and not told Cora. So, someone scratched out the original address and scribbled “Woodstock, Conn.” It arrived in Woodstock on August 21st.

What a Difference Fourteen Years Can Make

This postcard is a picture of “The Portals in the Canyon of the Grand River”.

As you can see, it is aptly named: A portal is an entry point into something. In this case it is a canyon along the Grand River in Garfield County in the state of Colorado.

The picture was taken by William Henry Jackson who lived from 1843 to 1942. The picture show striated rock formations in the Glenwood Canyon formed by the Grand River. In the bottom left we can see some talus from the rock formations above this point. The train tracks we see belong to the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad; it is part of their Glenwood Extension.

If you went looking for this point using the title on the postcard, you would easily either get lost or never find it. This post card was published before March 1, 1907. At that time the river was called the Grand River; today it is known as the Colorado River. Fourteen years later, on July 25, 1921 Congress passed a bill authored by Ed Taylor to rename the Grand River to the Colorado River. It didn’t rename the entire river; it simply extended the name of the Colorado River up into the state to one of the sources of the river in Grand County. You can read the actual bill here: http://lib.colostate.edu/archives/water/grand.html

Because of the research I have done around this postcard I have had to rearrange my postcard collection. I have assumed that the Grand River referred to the river that goes through the Royal Gorge in Colorado – not so!

The postcard was published by Frank S. Thayer. Based in Denver, he published many books, several of which included beautiful scenery from the state of Colorado.

I can see how he might have extended the objects he published from books to postcards after looking at some of the books he published. In 1899 he published “Colorado in Color and Song” by J.W. Wright and Frank H. Mayer. He also formed a partnership with Charles Roscoe Savage a prolific photographer. In 1866, Savage photographed his 9000 mile tour of North America. Savage travelled extensively along the transcontinental railroad photographing its construction. He photographed the completion of the railroad at Promontory Point, Utah in 1869. Savage also produced scenic views of the West in cartes-de-visites form. In the 1880s, Savage formed a partnership with Frank S. Thayer, to produce a series of guidebooks to Utah.

This postcard also records a bit of history. On the back it reminds us that prior to March 1, 1907 only the address could be written on the back of a picture postcard. Then congress passed a bill that said that after March 1, 1907 the right side of a postcard back was to contain the address while the left side could hold a message from the sender to the receiver.

Pike's Peak or Bust

Summit of Pike’s Peak

Needless to say, Pike’s Peak was there long before Lieutenant Zebulon Pike first saw it in November of 1806. The resident Ute Indians were very familiar with the mountain as were the Spanish as they explored the area.

Pike’s Peak began its relationship with the railroads soon after its discovery. The founder of the Denver and Rio Grande Rail Road loved it so much he made his home near the mountain and promoted tourists to drop by and see the mountain as they travelled on his railroad. It became quite a popular tourist destination and people found many creative ways to get to the summit.

One of these tourists was the owner of the Simmons Mattress Company. He rode a mule for two days in order to reach the top of the mountain. When he returned the owner of the hotel in which he was staying planed the idea of a railroad eventually taking people to the summit. Agreeing that people needed to see the beauty, he began gathering the capital necessary to build that railroad. The Manitou and Pike’s Peak Railway Company was founded in 1889. On the afternoon of June 30th, 1891, a church choir from Denver, Colorado became the first passengers on the first train to make it to the summit.

Fifteen years later this post card depicting the summit of Pike’s Peak was mailed. It shows one of the steam engines from the Baldwin Locomotive Works used on the cog railroad that lifted passengers up to the top. The Summit House, which is also shown on the front of the post card, has undergone several metamorphoses.

The Summit House began as a signal station for the US Signal Services in 1873. This building was replaced by a larger one to accommodate the many tourists that were climbing to the summit. A homestead, consisting of one log cabin, was added to the peak in 1886. The signal station was closed in 1888, but tourists continued to use it for shelter. In 1892 the railroad received permission to reconstruct the signal house for the use of their customers; it could accommodate 15 guests, had a lunch counter and a gift shop. Around 1900 the summit house was enlarged and refitted. This is the one we see on the front of the post card.

The post card is from the Undivided Back Era, which ended on March 1, 1907. There are two postmarks on the card. The first one, July 26, 1906 is the date that it was sent from Burlington, Colorado at 5:00PM. The second one, July 27, 1906, is the date that it was received in Omaha, Nebraska at 10 AM.

The picture on the front of the post card is embossed. You can run your fingers over the card and feel the picture. I have several picture post cards of Pike’s Peak similar to this one. But, there is no indication of who the printer or the publisher are.

Not Salt Lake Utah Exactly

This post card is showing the Union Pacific Railroad Bridge, spanning the Santa Anna River, west of Riverside, California.

This bridge has significance because the Union Pacific Railroad Bridge was part of an overall plan initiated by Senator William Andrews Clark to connect the rail centers of Salt Lake City and Los Angeles, thereby creating a route of strategic importance for the shipping and transportation of materials. The Bridge was also, at one time, the largest concrete bridge on earth.

When built in 1903 it was billed as the largest concrete viaduct in the world. It is 984 feet (300 m) long, 17 feet (5.2 m) wide, averages 55 feet (17 m) in height, and contains about 14,000 cubic feet (400 m3) of concrete. As a comparison, Glenfinnan Viaduct (the "Harry Potter" viaduct) was built in 1901 and is 1,035 feet (315 m) long and up to 100 feet (30 m) high.

The post card is from the divided back era, so it is from around 1907 to 1915. M. Reider (in business from 1901 to 1915)printed and published view-cards of the West and of Native Americans. His cards were printed in Germany except those contracted out to Edward H. Mitchell in the United States. On E-bay, there is a post card published by Edward H. Mitchell (EHM) that uses the exact same picture on the front, but says it is published by EHM. I am trying to purchase the card to add to my collection!

I am sorry about the quality of the pictures of this post card. The program and my new Windows 8 don't seem to like each other. I can scan the post card onto my computer with my trusty Epson V500 scanner, but I can't get it onto this program from there. So, I held up the post card to the webcam on my computer and took a photo of the post card directly into this blog. Hopefully, things will get better.

Beautiful and Dangerous

The scene on this post card is of a small section of Southern Pacific railroad in northern California. It is located in very northern California, 150 miles east of Eureka and 200 miles north of Sacramento. To get to this loop in the tracks one can drive Highway 5 to Shasta Springs and get onto some side roads that take you to the Cantara Loop Road.

There are two similar sharp loops in the same area to help the trains to negotiate the mountainous grades. The Cantara Loop crosses the Sacramento River shortly after the river leaves Lake Siskiyou.

On the post card you can see the famous Mt. Shasta in the background.

This loop became infamously famous about 20 years ago when a train derailed right on the bridge and a tanker spilled its contents into the river.

Following is a quote from the website: http://dtsc.ca.gov/cantara.cfm, “The accident still ranks as the largest hazardous chemical spill in California history. In the darkness of a Sunday night, July 14, a Southern Pacific Railroad train rounding the Cantara Loop over one of the Sacramento River’s most pristine stretches jumped the track. A tanker carrying 19,000 gallons of the deadly soil sterilizer, metam sodium, toppled into the water below, a gash in its side. The surreal green chemical gushed into one of America’s most renowned trout-fishing rivers. The spill, accompanied by a toxic chemical cloud that sent area residents to hospitals, quickly stripped bare a 41-mile stretch of the Sacramento River. Wildlife experts estimate the agricultural fumigant designed to kill soil pests killed more than one million fish and thousands of trees during a three-day floating journey to Shasta Lake.”

I understand that mother earth has healed herself over the past 20 years.

The car was printed by Curt Teich and Company. It says in the middle of the back of the card that they used the “C. T. Photo Colorit” system to produce the card. The number on the front, bottom right (5A-H811) tells us that this is what has become known as a linen card, invented by Curt Teich. That is what the H in the number tells us. The 5A tells us that a) it was printed in the 1930s (that is what the A tells us) and to be exact, it was printed in 1935 (the 5 tells us that). It is production run number 811 for that year. There were 2701 production runs that year, so this came early in the year. The post card was mailed on September 11, 1938.

The card was published by no less than the Southern Pacific Company of San Francisco, California! Their description on the back of card is: “The train spends five hours crossing and recrossing the Sacramento River. This loop was devised to get out of the canyon and up on the plateau where stands Mount Shasta. … Nothing could be a more glorious tribute to the marvelous skill of the modern railroad engineer than the obstacles met with and overcome in building a railroad through this rugged country.”

From the Desert to Paradise

Here is another post card promoting the joyous bliss of living in southern California! The title is: "IN CALIFORNIA = 'THE LAND OF SUNSHINE, FRUITS AND FLOWERS". I have to say that in the 17 years that I lived in southern California, I never saw any place like this. Of course, my time in southern California started in 1959; this section of the state might have been developed into housing by the time I got there.

But, I have to admit that I have seen the snow on the mountains, the orange trees with the train track, the pepper trees and the flowers all in southern California. I just never saw them all at the same time. It kind of make me want to go back there to see just where this picture was taken.

When we turn the card over we see that it was published by the Western Publishing & Novelty Co. of Los Angeles. I truly believe that they were some of the most prolific promoters of California (especially southern California) EVER!

I can't tell who printed the card for them... maybe by this time they printed their own. I would place the card in the White Border Era, which lasted from 1915 to 1930 more or less. There is a number in the top middle of the back of the card. I presume it is the order number or the run number. I haven't been able to find many details about the Western Publishing & Novelty Company, but if I did I think that this number A-101318 would give us an excellent idea about the date this card was printed and published.

Not all is orange blossoms

The last couple of posts have been about trains entering southern California through beautiful orange groves. This post card shows what they had to pass through in order to get to the orange groves - the desert. As you can see, the desert is not always a dusty, sandy location with no plant life. This picture was taken in the Spring, when the desert plants were in bloom (probably in late April or early May).
Unfortunately, the post card doesn't name the train, so I don't know exactly where this is. There are several routes that enter southern California through the various deserts.

This post card was printed by Curt Teich. His name is not mentioned on the front or the back. You just have to know these things. The number in the bottom right hand corner of the front of the post card (1A-H405) is the key to the mystery. The A tells us that this post card was printed in the 1930s. The number 1 gets more specific and informs us that it was actually 1931. The H after the dash indicates that the post card was printed using his special "Art Colortone Method", also known as Linen Cards. The texture on the front of the post card makes it look and feel as if it were printed on a linen-type substance. Notice that they kept the white border from the previous era to save on ink costs. In 1931 there were 565 post cards printed by Curt Teich. This is number 405 of that series. 405 is 71.68% of 565. 71.68% of the calendar year falls on September 18th. So this card was printed somewhere near September of 1931.



The card was published by the Western Publishing & Novelty Co. of Los Angeles, California. I don't know a lot about them, except that they were prolific producers of printed materials. The previous post card in this blog posting was also published by them. What I could dig up, I owe to the Metropolitan Post Card Club of New York City: they tell us that the company existed in Southern California from 1932 until the 1970s; and that they were a publisher and distributer of California related tourist materials and postcards.

You Can Trust a Post Card Picture! Can’t you?

Here we are again, passing through an orange grove in Southern California. The previous blog post showed the front of a train; this is what the back of a train looks like. I can imagine all the Easterners coming to Southern California for the first time and, as the train passes through the orange groves to get to Los Angeles, crowding the back platform of the last car to get a better look at the trees laden with fruit! These people seem to have been distracted by the camera in the vehicle right behind them – or are scared stiff, afraid that it will crash into them. They do look rather casual, so this is probably a staged photo, after all. The title on the card doesn’t give us a very good perspective as to where in Southern California these tracks are. It simply says, “The ‘Limited’ passing through the Orange Groves, California.” When I was a kid growing up east of Los Angeles, we actually came across orange groves with train tracks through the middle of them – many times in many locations. We used to go for family car rides on Sundays and sometimes this post card is exactly what we saw, minus the train.

When you turn the card over and read the message on the back, you realize that you can trust a post card picture. The message says, “When travelling on the Limited this is one of the first scenes the tourist gets of Southern California. It is exactly as pictured.” So, there we have it. Someone travelled on “The Limited” into Southern California and verified that the picture on the front can be trusted. Hmmmmm.

The post card was published by the Western Publishing & Novelty Co. Los Angeles, Cal. The Metropolitan Post Card Club of New York City tells us that the company existed in Southern California from 1932 until the 1970s. They were a publisher and distributer of California related tourist materials and postcards.

It was printed by (or the picture was taken by) Theo Sohmer. There is a very long an extremely interesting history of Theo Sohmer written for the South Jersey Post Card Club’s newsletter in October of 2006. I recommend that you read page 3 of the newsletter, which can be found here: http://sjpostcard.com/ARCHIVES/2006PDF/102006/McClintock.pdf
The nutshell version is that Theo Sohmer was a prolific photographer for a newspaper who took pictures of many parts of California and sold his photos to the Western Publishing & Novelty Co. He had so many pictures that he even designed a logo for his copyright. You can see it in the upper left corner of the post card.

Copyright Infringed?

What a Difference a Decade Can Make!

These two post cards look extremely similar.

The titles are even almost the same title. If you look at the clouds in the background they are the same shape. There is a dead tree on the right-hand side of both post cards, too. Even the oranges are growing in the same spots on the trees. I have to admit that I much prefer the top card to the bottom one.

This is a good illustration of how either a) the post card publishers ignored the copyright rules, or b) how one company who owned the copyright sold the same picture to two different publishers. Both of these were common in the early days of post card publishing and selling.

In order to find the answer to this “question” one must turn the post cards over.

When you do, you can see that the top post card was mailed on May 6, 1911 (the clear postmark) and the bottom one was mailed around March 11, 1923 (the hand written date and only the year on the postmark).

The top card was published by the Newman Post Card Co. in Los Angeles and San Francisco, California. Founded in 1907, they were a publisher and printer of lithographic postcards, mostly views of southern California, with some cards of Hawaii and Nevada and the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition. They were related to the O. Newman Company. In the 1960s they were purchased by H.S Crocker and so they kind of still exist. It was printed by the Van Ornum Colorprint Company out of Los Angeles. This company was in existence from 1908 to 1921. Knowing the dates of these two companies, we can date this card to between 1907 and 1921. We can, of course, date it even closer because the postmark says May 6, 1911.

The bottom card was published by the M. Kashower Co. of Los Angeles. They existed from 1914 to 1934. These publishers used a variety of printers to produce their comic cards, holiday greetings, and view-cards of southern California. This card, too, was printed by the Van Ornum Colorprint Company. We could do the math to figure out between which years the post card could have been printed, but the postmark tells us it was mailed in 1923.

My conclusion to the question above is that the Van Ornum Company owned the print and sold it first to the Newman Post Card Company then to the M. Kashower Company. Maybe they got around any copyright agreements by changing the title on the front from “Entering Southern California” to simply “Entering California”.

Way Up North - part two

Here is part two of the previous post. This is the post card in my collection that looks just like the picture on the White Pass and Yukon Railroad's website.

This is not a very good scan of the post card. It is a picture of, as is written on the front of the card, "Steel Cantilever Bridge over Dead Horse Gulch". I know that it is on the White Pass and Yukon Railway because the message on the back says, "You'll be glad to hear that we missed the ride on this train - Yukon and White Pass R.R." This confirms for me that the post card in Way Up North - Part One is of this bridge on this railroad.

The post card was printed by Gowan Sutton. They were a publisher of real photo and printed postcards of the Canadian West. Not only did they produce cards depicting large cities, they captured many hard to reach views within the Canadian Territories. Many of their cards were hand tinted in a simple manner striving for style rather than realism, which created cards in vastly differing quality. While the real photo cards were made in Canada their printed cards were made in England. They were in business from 1921 to 1960 in Vancouver.

Way Up North - part one

The front of this post card is titled: "SERVICE OF THE NORTHLAND, ALTIN, B.C." While searching for "Altin" I found nothing, but another town showed up: Atlin, British Columbia. I followed my instincts and found that the name of the post card is misspelled.

Atlin is an existing small isolated community in the NW corner of British Columbia, on the traditional lands of the Taku River Tlingits. Glacial-fed Atlin Lake is 4 miles wide and 85 miles long, in a wide wilderness valley surrounded by snowcapped mountains. Atlin is a 2 to 3 hour drive from Whitehorse Yukon or Skagway Alaska. Current population is 300 to 500 full-time residents. During the Klondyke Gold Rush of 1898, the population was 10,000! Many buildings from that era still exist. Though Mining and Tourism underpin the economy of Atlin, there is a large and very influential number of artists, artisans and authors in this very special little-known community. This information was taken from the website of the town: discoveratlin.com If you draw a straight line between Whitehorse in Yukon and Juneau in Alaska, Atlin is at the half-way point and a few kilometers east of the line. Atlin was founded in 1898 after European explorers Fritz Miller and Kenny McLaren discovered gold nearby in Pine Creek. The White Pass and Yukon Railway Company recognized Atlin's potential as a tourist destination and promoted the town to the fullest.

I also found that Atlin had at least three railway companies named after it:

The Atlin Railway Company was incorporated in 1914 and went from Atlin to a point on the US boundary at Taku River.

The Atlin Short Line Railway and Navigation Company was incorporated in 1899 to build from Taku Arm, Cassiar District, along the valley of Atlintoo River, on the north side of the river, to near where the Atlintoo River leaves Atlin Lake. The company was dissolved by the Defunct Railway Companies Act of 1926-27.

The Atlin Southern Railway Company was also incorporated in 1899 to build from Log Cabin, on the White Pass to the Taku Arm of Taglish Lake, from the entrance of Atlintoo River into Taglish Lake and from Atlin City to Telegraph Creek,with branches.The company was also dissolved by the Defunct Railway Companies Act of 1926-27.

In my searching I also found a picture on the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad's website (wpyr.com). The bridge on that card looks extremely like the bridge on this post card. So I am concluding that this train belonged to the original White Pass and Yukon Railway. My next step was to look at my collection of train post cards and see if I could corroborate the story with some other kind of "proof". I am posting that picture today in a second post because the blogging site's program is having trouble doing what I want it to in this blog posting. So, take a look at Way Up North - part two.

In the upper right hand corner of the back of this post card, where the stamp usually goes, the letters AZO are printed four times to make the square for the stamp placement. In each corner of this square are four other squares. This tells us that this is a Kodak paper called AZO and was used between 1926 and the 1940s.

This paper and development process was suitable for making contact prints, rather than enlargements for which the source of light would be much weaker.

Because of the destiny of the three railways mentioned above, I have a tendency to date this card into the late 1920s.

Take a look at the second half of this post...

Hybrid in More Ways than One

We have gone back to the Rocky Mountains in British Columbia, Canada.

This is a picture of a passenger train in the Fraser River Valley. One can see the river in the valley on the right hand side of the post card. There isn’t enough detail to be able to say anything about the engine itself. There is only one engine and it looks like it is pulling a baggage car and three passenger cars. It is on quite the steep slope and the rocks on the slope hint that this part of the railroad was dynamited to be able to get the two parts of Canada united by the transcontinental railroad.

This is a hybrid card. The front of the card looks very much like those printed before March 1, 1907. The printer kindly left a bit of room for the sender to put a short message to the right side of the picture before posting the card.

But, when we look at the back, we see that it was actually printed after March 1, 1907. There is space on the left of the card for the message and the right hand side of the card clearly states: “THIS SPACE FOR ADDRESS ONLY.” It is just under the words Post Card at the top. While the card was printed in Canada, the Canadians could not escape the influence of the American postal system.

Middlesex county Woburn was incorporated in 1642. It can be found near Boston in Middlesex County almost on the eastern coast of Massachusetts. It is near Horn Pond, which is one of the sources of the Mystic River. That is where this card was posted, and yet it has a Canadian 2 cent stamp on it. That makes it again a hybrid: Canadian card and stamp mailed in the USA. Amelia sent this message to her friend, Celina: “Hello Celina, Am enjoying myself very much. This is some country. Love, Amelia.” Celina lived in Montague City, Massachusetts. It is found in the northwest part of the state in Franklin County. It is a very young town, being incorporated in 1754.

The post card was published and printed by Warwick Bro’s. & Rutter, Limited out of Toronto, Ontario in Canada. The firm of Warwick Bros & Rutter published over 7,024 picture postcards during what is now called “The Golden Age of Postcards” (1901-1913).

For some years, the firm made a specialty of the production of picture post cards. It was the first Canadian firm to enter the field with “Made in Canada” coloured cards, leading the way in three color and four color printing processes and making available the highest class of color printing at a popular price.

Source: “Warwick Bros & Rutter Limited. The Story of a Business 1848-1923"

Huff and Puff and Puff !

Some of my earlier blog postings discussed the various issues that the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) had to face as it was building the Transcontinental Railroad. The area near Field, British Columbia was particularly nasty! This post card helps to illustrate just how bad it was.

There are three steam engines pushing what looks like six passenger cars up the hill toward the summit of the Rocky Mountains just east of Field, British Columbia. If you look carefully, in the lower right hand corner of the picture is a short section of track that goes up a hill to nowhere in particular. CPR built several of these little spurs so that trains that lost control would have an emergency pull out to keep them from careening down the mountain side into the Kicking Horse River.


The picture on the front of this post card was taken by Richard H. Trueman.

He also printed the post card. Trueman first arrived in British Columbia in 1889. He had begun his career as a photographer in Brampton, Ontario, (where he was born in 1856) in the early 1880s at about the time replacement of the cumbersome wet-plate process by faster, commercially available dry-plates was revolutionizing photography, making outdoor photography an economic and practical reality. After working along the Canadian Pacific Railway main line for a year, Trueman and his partner, Norman Caple, set up headquarters in Vancouver. For the next four years the firm of Trueman & Caple worked between Winnipeg and the coast, specializing in mountain and railway views, ranch scenes and Indians.2 This specialty continued for Trueman even after the partnership dissolved and R. H. Trueman & Company of Vancouver was established in 1894. Although the company was primarily a portraiture business, the landscape and documentary sidelines remained Trueman's avocation. For the next sixteen years, until his death in 1911, he travelled the rails throughout the province, skilfully recording life and landscape.

This post card was mailed on August 24, 1909. It is over 100 years old.

One Heck of a Bridge!

The picture on the front of this “real photograph” post card is of the Lethbridge Viaduct in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. The writing on the front of the post card informs us that the length of the bridge is “ONE MILE & 47 FEET” long and that the height is “307 FEET”. A quick glance at Wikipedia concurs that this in, indeed, a very large bridge.

The website tells us that the bridge, built by 100 men, was a replacement to the original route that was built in order to complete the Canadian Transcontinental Railroad to British Columbia in a reasonable amount of time. This bridge replaced at least four other bridges, shortened the route by 8.5 kilometers and reduced the grade from 1.2 percent to .4 percent!

The website also tells us that it is the largest railway structure in Canada and the largest of its type in the world. Construction began in 1907 and was completed two years later.

The picture was taken by Arthur Rafton-Canning. According to the Images Canada Web site description of the contributing Sir Alexander Galt Museum and Archives, "Arthur Rafton-Canning established the British & Colonial Photographic Company at Sixth Street South in Lethbridge in 1907, and operated it until 1913 when he moved out of southern Alberta."

Rafton-Canning retired to White Rock, B.C. his wife, Annie Elizabeth (Parsons) Canning, whom he married in 1885 in England, died in 1949, age 83. In White Rock, Mr. Rafton-Canning was an amateur photographer. He was also a member of the Canadian Legion, Branch No. 8, and the first president of the White Rock Board of Trade. At the time of his death on December 15, 1952 at age 87 or 88, Arthur Rafton-Canning was residing in his home called "Fort McMurray" on Donald Avenue.

Happy Fourth of July

In honor of the 4th of July, I have laid out all of the post cards in my collection that celebrate the bicentennial that happened way back in 1976. There are 32 post cards that show how the various railway lines and private companies celebrated the bicentennial. None of these cards have been sent through the post office.

I see that the image overflows onto my side bars. But, I don't know how to correct that.

The oldest two are actually not celebrating the bicentennial. They are from 1948 and they are showing what is called the Freedom Train. The copyright is from 1948 by The American Heritage Foundation.

I would like to point out the train in the far right column, last row. It is the "Preamble Express". It preceded the actual 1976 Freedom Train on the tracks in order to check the security on the tracks. I would hate to be a passenger on that train if I knew what its purpose was.

Anyway.... Happy Fourth of July.

Coal as King

This post card shows one of the ways that the coal was lifted from the banks of the North Saskatchewan River up to the flats on which the city of Edmonton was built. It is an elevated railway that took the coal up the hill at what is today 101st Street. From here it was sold to homes, businesses and to the railroad to be used to fire the boilers in their steam locomotives.

Today, there is talk in the city of Edmonton about building a funicular that goes up and down the side of the river bank. As you can see, this is not a new idea. It was thought of and executed many years ago. Of course, they were recently speaking about hauling tourists, not coal, up and down!!

Today, Edmonton, Alberta has several refineries on the outskirts of the city and in the neighbouring counties. It seems to be sitting right in the middle of the source of today’s most popular source of energy – oil. This has not always been the case – that is that oil is the most popular source of energy – at one time it was coal. Edmonton sits on top of one- to three-metre thick seams of coal that played a crucial role in the city’s formative years. Before petroleum and natural gas fuelled growth and heated homes, coal was king.

The earliest known record of coal mining in the Edmonton region dates to the 1840s, when Hudson’s Bay Company employees began random excavations. John Walter imported the first coal stove into Edmonton. Hotelier Donald Ross began pulling coal from the slope above his Edmonton Hotel in 1881 and burned it in his stove to keep guests warm. The hotel, the settlement’s first, was situated on the river flats that came to bear his name just below today’s Chateau Lacombe.

Early European settlers used coal mined from the banks of the North Saskatchewan River to heat their dwellings, and before long many commercial and public buildings did, too. Around the turn of the 20th century, mining and processing coal was one of the community’s leading industries, providing employment for hundreds of workers – mostly men.

It wasn’t hard to find, either. Seams were visible along the North Saskatchewan River valley, particularly east of today’s Shaw Conference Centre along Grierson Hill, in the river cliffs just west of Scona Road, and in the big cliff east across the river from Rundle Park.

This post card was published by the Stedman Brothers, Ltd from Brantford, Ontario in Canada. They were a very large publisher of black & white and tinted halftone view-cards of central Canada and the Great Lakes region. The brothers (George, Samuel and Ted) opened their first store in Brantford, Ontario on January 1, 1905 and they quickly spread their business across Canada. At one time they even had more stores than any other chain in Canada.

One of their biggest selling products was picture post cards of “Canadiana”. Although most of the over 8,000 different post cards were photo based, the images went under heavy retouching. Many of the images revolve around railroads. Post cards were also published about local Indians and of a patriotic nature as the First World War neared. While most of their printed cards were made in Germany; they also produced bordered cards on bromide paper that were manufactured in England.

The company existed for only a few short years: 1905 to 1918, but one can find many, many cards published by them in the archives of many universities on line.