Part of the Whole

This post card is a depiction of a passenger train passing through the state of Nevada. The route was known as the Overland Express. This route was part of the first Transcontinental Railroad, of which the last spike was driven on May 10, 1869 at Promontory Point in Utah.

Here it is west of Promontory Point, passing a water tower in Palisade Canyon in Nevada. The river to which it is running parallel is the Humbolt River. This river is interesting in as much as it doesn’t flow to anywhere. It actually evaporates before it can get to the ocean.

This is a map to give you an idea of where the Palisade Canyon is on the river.

The post card was published by the Newman Post Card Company out of Los Angeles, California. It was 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. Founded by Oscar Newman, this company published postcards in hand colored collotype and tinted halftones, consisting mostly of holiday cards and views of southern California. They also published a set on the San Francisco earthquake and the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition. Some of their cards were printed with the Newman Post Card Co. logo on them.

This section of the back of the post card indicates that it came from the Newman Post Card Company.
In the 1960s, the Newman Post Card Company was acquired by H.S. Crocker.

The post card itself, is from the Divided Back Era so it was printed and published between 1907 and 1915.

Cantra Loop, Contra Loop or Cantara Loop?

The scene on this post card is of a small section of what was then the Southern Pacific railroad in northern California. Today, of course, it is owned by the Union Pacific Railroad. I published some information about another post card with a picture of this loop 6 months ago on September 6, 2013. You can read about The Loop in that blog posting.

I wanted to show this post card because even though the name is on the post card twice (once on the front and once on the back) the printer and publisher both missed the fact that it is spelled incorrectly both times.

On the front The Cantara Loop (correct spelling) is spelled "Cantra". On the back it is spelled "Contra".

They certainly got the rest of the information right, though! If you have never been to northern California you have missed some very beautiful and dramatic scenery.

The printer of the post card is the H.H. Tammen Curio Company. The logo is the arrow in the middle of the card pointing up to the little space alien-type critter.

Mr. Tammen would probably be mortified at the double mistake; he was an owner and editor of the Denver Post for many years.

They were a novelty dealer and important publisher of national view-cards and Western themes in continuous tone and halftone lithography. Their logo does not appear on all their cards but other graphic elements are often remain the same.

H. H. Tammen (1856-1924) Harry Heye Tammen was born in Baltimore, Maryland on March 6, 1856, the son of a German immigrant pharmacist. He attended Knapps Academy in Baltimore, then worked in Philadelphia before moving to Denver in 1880.

With his partner Charles A. Stuart he worked as a Denver bartender in 1880, and in 1881 they established the firm of H.H. Tammen & Co. (which in 1896 became the H.H. Tammen Curio Co., with partners Carl Litzenberger and Joseph Cox) in Denver, Colorado. Deeply interested in the study of mineralogy, he published a promotional journal called Western Echoes magazine, "Devoted to Mineralogy, Natural History, Botany, &c. &c." Volume 1 Number 1 is copyrighted 1882.

In 1895 Tammen formed a partnership with F.G. Bonfils (whom he had met at the Chicago World's Fair) and they became co-owners and co-editors of the Denver Post. Their publishing business flourished, and Tammen's business successes made him a wealthy man. In 1917 Buffalo Bill Cody happened to die while in Denver, and Tammen (one of the city's biggest boosters) offered Cody's widow $10,000 if she would allow Cody to be buried in Denver; she accepted, and the ensuing funeral procession drew 50,000 people. He established the H.H. Tammen Trust in 1924, providing essential health care for children of families who cannot afford to pay. Tammen died July 19, 1924. The H.H. Tammen Curio Co. was in business until 1953, and possibly as late as 1962.

Here is the trademark of the publisher, but, for the life of me, I cannot connect it to any company. Any assistance you can provide will be GREATLY appreciated.

Obviously it is a company with two names; the first one starts with a B and the second one starts with an N.

The Other Two Royal Gorge Observation Cars

These are the two other post cards I mentioned in my blog last week.

The top one is from October 4, 1905 (prior to March 1, 1907 after which you could write a message on the back of the post cards), so the message is on the front of the post card. Charles is telling Helen (the addressee) that he and Mary rode on the car in the picture through the Royal Gorge that day. There is no indicator about who the publisher or printer are.

The bottom card is postally unused. However, it is from post March 1, 1907 because there is room for the message on the back. The back also tells us that the Carson-Harper Company of Denver Colorado printed the card. When you compare the two backs, you can see that the words POST and CARD are in the same font style.

More (Lots More) about the Back than the Front of the Post Card

This post card shows a steam engine going through the Royal Gorge in Colorado on the left and gives a detail of what it is pulling on the right. If the picture doesn’t tell you the story, the words above certainly make it clear. “Through the Royal Gorge in an Observation Car on the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad”.

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The history of the Royal Gorge is fascinating. You can read about it on the Wikipedia website here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Gorge

I recommend the article.

The train still runs through the Royal Gorge today, although it is not operated by one of the big Railroad Operators.
You can catch a ride through this website: https://www.royalgorgeroute.com/
They operate trains year-round from Cañon City, Colorado. It is on my “bucket list” of things to see and do.

I have mentioned the Royal Gorge in 12 previous posts, so I won’t go into detail about the topic on the front of the post card.

I will delve into the content on the back of the post card.

In a book about post card collecting I once read a chapter titled “Every Post Card has Two Sides”. This chapter opened my post card world very wide. I now try to find out all I can about both the publisher and the printer of every post card. I have a list of 325 publishers and printers of the post cards in my collection. I research all of them whenever I can. Many of these were truly unsung heroes of the post card world. I only know a little bit about just over one third of the known publishers and printers… and there are many post cards that do not reveal who printed or published them.

Today’s post card is an example of not knowing much about who published or printed the post card. There are certainly clues. The design between the two pictures is unique. The print style on the font is another clue. I know it is part of a series of cards because I have two others similar to this one.

When I look at the back of one of those other cards, I see that it was printed by Carson-Harper from Denver, Colorado. Carson-Harper published both books and postcards. They produced multi-view scenes of the West as pioneer souvenir cards and private mail cards in tinted halftone. They later reproduced many early pioneer images as regular postcards. (from: http://www.metropostcard.com/publishersc1.html )
I cannot guarantee that Carson-Harper printed the one in this blog, but you can compare the post cards in my next blog.

Today, I am concentrating on the message on the card. What really caught my eye was the PS in the upper left-hand corner of the card.

The body of the message gives me the impression that this is the woman of a married couple, Jennie and George, who are coming back from a journey out west, writing to her mother and a friend who lives with the mother. She is telling them that they have arrived in Colorado Springs at noon and will leave tomorrow just before noon. They haven’t decided if they will go up to Pikes Peak. They are on their way to Emporia (I presume that this is Emporia, Kansas).

Side note about Emporia, Kansas from Wikipedia:
The city is the home of Emporia University and once had an Amtrak stop that was served by the east and westbound Southwest Chiefs daily. The station was eliminated in the mid-90s. Here is a file picture I found on line of what the station used to look like:

The Southwest Chief is the successor to the Super Chief, a train operated by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (Santa Fe) until 1971 and later by Amtrak until March 1974 when the Santa Fe forced Amtrak to stop using the name because of a perceived decline in quality after Amtrak took over the Santa Fe's passenger trains. After subsequent improvements in service, the Santa Fe allowed Amtrak to change the name of the Southwest Limited to the Southwest Chief on October 28, 1984.

In 1953, Emporia was the site of the first Veterans Day observance in the United States. At the urging of local shoe cobbler Alvin J. King, U.S. Representative Edward Rees introduced legislation in The United States Congress to rename Armistice Day as Veterans Day. President Eisenhower signed the bill into law on October 8, 1954.

Back to the P.S.:
It reads, “P. S. We were only delayed 3 hours by the slide near Soldiers Summit yesterday in Utah.” Imagine being the mother and receiving that Post Script! I would wonder if they were okay, if the train was damaged, it anyone was hurt, etc. But Jennie drops it as a second thought. They must be okay.

Soldier Summit takes its name from a group of soldiers who were caught in an unexpected snowstorm on the summit in July 1861. These soldiers were Southerners, previously under Union General Philip St. George Cooke at Camp Floyd, on their way to join the Confederate Army. A few of them died in the storm and were buried on the summit.

The post card is addressed to her mother who lived in McConnell, Illinois. Here is a bit of history about McConnell, also from Wikipedia:

In 1836, John Dennison claimed 1,000 acres east of the Pecatonica River for the purpose of starting a town. The area was heavily timbered and required a saw mill, which was erected north of the grove on a small creek in the spring of the year. This mill, located on Muddy Creek, was operated by Dennison and John Van Zant.

During the following year, Dennison and Van Zant plotted the town with Van Zant acting as surveyor. Stephenson County abstracts prove that the town was to be called either "Pennsylvania" or "New Pennsylvania".

By the spring of 1838, Dennison and Van Zant had made several land improvements and sold all of it, including the mill, to Robert McConnell. McConnell then changed the name to "McConnell's Grove". Due to Galena being the nearest town to acquire supplies and mail, McConnell built a storehouse and went to Galena to purchase goods to start a trading post.
On March 11, 1842 the land Robert McConnell received from Dennison and Van Zant was deeded from the United States to McConnell from the Land Office in Dixon.

Worth mentioning here is that Galena, the town that Mr. McConnell went to for supplies, was also a terminus on a railroad that went to Chicago. But, more than that, the Galena & Chicago Railroad was the first railroad to operate in Chicago. It was built to connect the lead mines near Galena to Chicago. This is rather unusual because the railroad comes from the west in 1848. One could easily have expected that one of the major railroads of the day would reach Chicago first. But, no; railroads didn’t reach Chicago from the east until 1852. These were the Michigan Central and the Michigan Southern Railroads.

The post card was mailed on June 26, 1922, so it is 91 years old.

A Trip to New Hamshire

This post card shows a steam engine coming around the corner in the Crawford Notch. Crawford Notch is the steep and narrow gorge of the Saco River in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. It was discovered in 1771 by Timothy Nash.

Although it was originally called the White Mountain Notch, it is called CRAWFORD notch today because it drains toward the Crawford Brook watershed. The brook was named after Abel Crawford, an early explorer and settler from the late 1700s and early 1800s.

This hand drawn map gives you a general idea of where Crawford Notch is in New Hampshire.

The White Mountains were heavily logged from about 1875 to 1925 or so. Logging activity was always an invitation to build railroads. And, sure enough, four railroads provided the logging services in this area of New Hampshire: the Little River Railroad, the Saco Valley Railroad (1875 – 1898), the Sawyer River Railroad (1867 to 1927), and the Zealand Valley Railroad (1885 – 1897). I am not sure which one is represented in the picture on the front of this post card. It might even be from the Boston, Concord and Montreal Railroad.

You can see a sign in the bottom right hand corner of the picture that says, “THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT”.

The following is taken from the website: http://whitemountainhistory.org/English_Jack.html

The "Hermit of Crawford Notch" was 85 years old when he died on April 24, 1912 and his obituary appeared in the New York Times. He was known at all as English Jack; his real name was Jack Vials. Not a whole lot is known about Jack. He lived in a ramshackle home that he built himself and called his "ship". It was close to the Crawford House and apparently there was a path to his house from the railroad tracks at the Gate of the Notch. Postcards show the track and a sign indicating that Jack lived there. He was well known to tourists who frequently visited. He entertained his visitors with stories of his seafaring days and he sold them some of his homemade beer.

It makes me think of the Children’s Tale “The House that Jack Built”. He served beer, which takes malt to make, probably attracted rats, he might have kept a cat to control the rats, etc. Alas, it is not based on this Jack. It was first published in 1755, so the story wasn’t based on his home. The title to his home was based on the Tale.

The number 1613 is written in the bottom right hand corner below the sign.

I presume that this means that this was the 1,613th post card published by J. V. Hartman and Company. Hartman was a photographer that published his images of New England views as monochrome and color postcards. His company existed from about 1910 to 1920. That is why this post card is from the Divided Back Era (1907 – 1915). Judging by the post card number on front and the given years, we can date this post card to between 1910 and 1915.

This Will Not Take Long

This post card is a pictures of people who have been working on the railroad somewhere in Canada. They have taken a convenient break to both pose for a picture and to let a steam engine through and, perhaps, to sing, "I've Been Working on the Railroad". It looks like it might be a real photo post card.

You now know everything that I know about the picture on the front of this post card.

The back tells us a little bit more. The back confirms what we thought about the front, that it might be a real photo post card.

In the box where the postage stamp belongs, the frame contains the word VELOX and there are four diamonds, one in each corner. VELOX is the first commercially successful type of paper that was used for real photo cards. It was invented by Leo Baekeland and sold to Eastman Kodak in the late 1800s. VELOX makes black-and-white images suitable for contact printing. The four diamonds tell us that particular VELOX paper was used between 1907 and 1914. This would also explain why it is a divided back era card, too.

Not only did he invent the VELOX paper, he also invented in 1907 the first inexpensive plastic that helped to develop the beginning of the modern plastics industry. It is called Bakelite. I remember learning how to perform several machining maneuvers in high school on Bakelite.

I have included a closer look at the postage stamp box as well as the fact that the card was “MADE IN CANADA”.