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.