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.