Linen Post Cards

Continuing on the theme of Pikes Peak, I have scanned three post cards from the Linen Post Card era. The ages of these cards range from the 1930s to the mid-1940s. Because they are postally unused, I cannot tell you the exact age of any of the cards. Two of them are from the H.H. Tammen Company which existed from 1896 to 1953; one is from the Sanborn Souvenir Company, which existed from 1920 to 1976. This is quite the range of dates but, we can narrow it down a bit.These three post cards are what they call Linen Post Cards. In about 1930 publishers began to print post cards on a linen paper stock. These post cards were called linen because the rag content within the paper gave these post cards a textured “feel.” You can also see the weave in the cards if you hold them just right in the lighting. They were popular among the printers and publishers because they were cheaper to produce and they accepted the use of bright dyes for coloring the pictures on the faces of the cards. Curt Otto Teich was among the early linen post card publishers; some say his company invented the process. The advent of chrome post cards (1939) brought this era to an end. You can see some example of chrome post cards in my previous blog post.

Although you couldn’t tell it by the smoke coming out of the engine, the top post card is a view of Windy Point on the way up to Pikes Peak. It is a product of the H.H. Tammen Company. There is no indicator on the card about who might have printed the card.

The middle card is showing a train as it passed the timberline on Pikes Peak. This was published by the Sanborn Souvenir Company from Denver, Colorado. There is no indicator of the printer on the back of the card, but the number on the front hints that it may have been the Curt Teich Company. The visual “feel” of the card places it back in the early 1900s; but, the linen in the card says otherwise. If I am correct in interpreting the number in the bottom right hand corner of the card (14400-N), this was a reprint of a post card that the Curt Teich Company first printed in 1908. The N in Curt Teich parlance indicates that this card is a reprint.

The bottom card is also from the H.H. Tammen Company and again there is no indicator of who the printer was. One way of dating this card might be to know more about cars than trains.

There are a couple of automobiles at the top of Pikes Peak. If I knew as much about cars as I do about trains, I could probably tell you the year and make of the cars. We could then date the post card to a time after that.

Chrome Cards

The theme of these post cards, as mentioned in my last blog, is Pikes Peak. The ages of these cards range from the 1950s to the 1970s.

This collection of post cards is from the modern version of post cards. They are what are called chrome post cards. In 1946 Kodak stared to produce and market Ektachrome transparent film. Kodachrome was used to make photographs and Ektachrome was used to make slides. I remember sitting through many home slide shows of our family vacations and other family activities. The pictures that we were able to blow up to the size of the wall of our living room were still very clear – they were not what we would call today pixilated at all.

In the case of these post cards those very clear pictures that could be projected also make extremely clear pictures on card stock. There is also a very smooth and shiny finish on the cards that protect the picture from handprints, etc. The finish on most of the post cards you can buy today look very similar to these cards.

The printers and publishers represented on these cards include:

Printers – Mike Roberts
Rembrant Cards
Dexter Press
Curt Otto Teich

Publishers – Pikes Peak News Agency
Noble of Colorado Springs, CO
Sanborn Souvenir
Cooper Post Card Co.
Altitude Publishing of Aurora, CO

Later Pikes Peak card

This post card is a view of the mountains around Pikes Peak from on top of Pikes Peak. ....If you have seen the few blog posts in the past on this site about Pikes Peak you might have noticed that the train on this post card is much more modern. That is because this post card is only about 55 years old. It is a young one compared to those others.

I will be going backwards in history in my next few blog posts. I will be posting some of my post cards that focus on Pikes Peak. I will start with this one and work back in time according to the ages of the post cards – I know that I have one from 1906. There are 72 post cards of Pikes Peak in my collection, but I will not subject you to all of them, just the ones I consider to be interesting.

The picture on this post card introduces us to a new era on the Pikes Peak Cog Train. Prior this era the engines that brought the passengers to the top of the mountain were steam engines. They required stops to take on water and a fireman to shovel the coal into the firebox. In the 1925 a gentleman of the name Spencer Penrose purchased the railroad. After studying the situation, he developed a more compact version of the train that went up to the peak that did not run on steam power. The result was a self-contained railcar that was powered by gasoline. This unit made its first trek up the mountain on June 16, 1938. It carried 23 passengers.

This was quickly improved to train units that could carry up to 56 passengers powered by a diesel engine. That is what we are looking at on the post card above.

You can get the history of these improvements on the Pikes Peak website: http://cograilway.com/history.htm

This card was published by the Cooper Post Card Company out of Lakewood, Colorado.

I have mentioned them before, and now I know one more bit of information than I did back then…. that they were around in 1959.

In the box where the stamp is to be placed,

there is a code – 9C-K1762 – that tells me that this post card was printed by the Curt Otto Teich Company. The C places the date in the 1950s; the 9 makes it 1959. The K indicates that the process used was the Curteichcolor method; this means it is a chrome postcard – which this one is. The 1762 tells us that this was the 1,762nd batch of cards that were printed in 1959. There were 3,032 batches that year. 1,762 is 58% of 3,032 and if we interpolate this into 1959, this card was printed at the end of July or the beginning of August.

Mr. David Moffat - Railroad Man

This post card shows a diesel engine in the livery of the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad. It is heading west, after having passed under the Continental Divide through the Moffat Tunnel.

The Moffat Tunnel, currently on the Union Pacific Railroad, was originally built for the Denver & Salt Lake Railroad. While this post card does not do it justice, you can see the east portal of the tunnel.

This view - with the arrow to help you to see - shows the entrance to the tunnel.

Almost all of the information below came from the Wikipedia website:
David Moffat was born in Washingtonville, New York on July 22, 1839. He moved to Denver, Colorado in 1860. On April 17, 1865 the First National Bank of Denver, was organized. It had little success until 1867, when Moffat was elected cashier. He remained the controlling mind in the institution until his death, being elected to the presidency in 1880. He instituted polices and methods which led to the growth and success of the bank for years to come. But, Mr. Moffat was more than a banker. He was a railroad visionary.

Unfortunately, as the Union Pacific Railroad built the transcontinental railroad heading west it by-passed Denver for a much flatter and easier to construct route. Building the transcontinental railroad through Nebraska, totally by-passing Colorado, left the Denver stranded from the commerce connections that it had hoped for.

As a result of this snub, the governor of Colorado, together with other local business leaders, including David Moffat partnered with East Coast investors to form a railroad company (the Denver Pacific Railway) that would link Denver and the Colorado Territory with the transcontinental railroad. The plan was to link Denver with the Union Pacific at Cheyenne, Wyoming. The company was incorporated on November 19, 1867 as the "Denver Pacific Railway and Telegraph Company". They broke ground on May 18, 1868 and two years later the line was completed. This was the first railroad company with which Mr. Moffat was involved.

The second railroad company, the Denver, South Park and Pacific Railroad, with which Moffat was involved got its start intending to connect the mining area of Colorado to the city of Denver. It began in 1872 and operated as an independent railroad until it was sold in foreclosure proceedings in 1889.

Looking south, Mr. Moffat, along with other business men, began the Denver and New Orleans Railroad. Their intention was to bring business to and from the Gulf of Mexico. Their company was later known as the Denver, Texas & Gulf Railroad and would become part of the Colorado and Southern Railway. They built from Denver to Pueblo, Colorado. Then General Grenville Mellen Dodge led the team that completed the line to Fort Worth. General Dodge took over the building of the Union Pacific Railroad in 1866. Having been a commander of the Union forces in the Civil War, he was able to exercise his leadership and get the track building back on track.

As if that wasn’t enough railroading, David Moffat then started the first trolley line in Denver. He and other associates (including the Governor of Colorado again) started the Denver Tramway. The tramway made use of a variety of types of streetcars, including conduit cars (until 1888), cable cars (until 1900), and trolley cars (until 1950). At the height of its trolley operations, the tramway owned 160+ miles of track and operated over 250 streetcars.

His next venture was to be the Manitou and Pike's Peak Railway climbing to the top of Pikes Peak. The base station is in Manitou Springs, Colorado. The railway is the highest in North America by a considerable margin. It was built and is operated solely for the tourist trade. The railway was started by Zalmon G. Simmons, inventor and founder of the Simmons Beautyrest Mattress Company and David Moffat. The company was founded in 1889 and limited service to the Halfway House Hotel was started in 1890. The summit was reached the following year.

In 1885 David Moffat was elected to Denver & Rio Grande board. Then in 1887 Moffat was elected president of the Denver & Rio Grande. Moffat built the Glenwood to Grand Junction, standard gauging Pueblo to Grand Junction, and the Tennessee pass tunnel.

1892 David Moffat next developed a railroad to Creede from Wagon Wheel Gap, Colorado. It ran along the banks of the Rio Grande to Creede, which was then a booming silver camp, at which he owned several mining clams. The Denver & Rio Grande Railroad wanted nothing to do with it, so Mr. Moffat built the road entirely at his own expense. He formed the Rio Grande Gunnison Railway Company. Then when it began to make a profit he sold it at a heavy profit to the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad.

Finally, David H. Moffat and his business associates established the Denver, Northwestern and Pacific Railway. It originated in Denver and was planned to terminate in Salt Lake City, Utah, though it went bankrupt before reaching that city. By 1913, it was reorganized as the Denver & Salt Lake Railway. It was along this railway that the Moffat Tunnel was bored. David Moffat envisioned a tunnel through the continental divide west of Denver. Construction of the Moffat Tunnel took place from 1923 to 1927. It was officially opened on February 28, 1928 with much fanfare and several trainloads of special guests in attendance at the East Portal, the picture on this post card. Denver & Salt Lake Railroad locomotive 205, a 2-6-6-0 compound locomotive, pulled the first official passenger train through the new tunnel. The Moffat Tunnel is 6.2 miles long and is the 6th largest tunnel on earth.

Mr. Moffat died on March 18, 1911, before he could realize this dream.

I know that this post card was published by the Cooper Post Card Company from Lakewood, Colorado. I cannot find anything about this publisher, so if you can help, I will be grateful.

I believe that it was printed by the Curt Teich company. The block where the stamp is to be placed has a very familiar looking pattern to the numbers.

The 9C-K670 indicates that this card was printed in the 1950s (the "C" in the code); 1959 to be exact (the "9" in the code before the "C"). The "K" following the dash indicates that the process "Curteichcolor" process was used - it is a chrome post card (which it is). The number "670" is the print run that year. There were 3023 runs that year. So, using interpolation, we can conclude that this was printed around March 21, 1959.

The Early Bird Gets the Snow

This picture shows the first train of the year to go to the top of Pikes Peak in Colorado.

To quote the back of the post card, “Each spring, in order to open the road, it is necessary to cut through the huge snow banks as shown in the picture. The snow is taken out in large blocks, loaded onto cars and dumped down the mountain side at some convenient place. While these huge snow banks disappear with the summer sun, there is perpetual snow near the summit.”

This post card was published by a tourist attraction (the Balanced Rock)

just up the road from Pikes Peak in the Garden of the Gods. It is a public park located in Colorado Springs. From Wikipedia: In August of 1859, two surveyors who helped to set up Colorado City explored the site. One of the surveyors, M. S. Beach, suggested that it would be a "capital place for a beer garden." His companion, the young Rufus Cable, awestruck by the impressive rock formations, exclaimed, "Beer Garden! Why it is a fit place for the gods to assemble. We will call it the Garden of the Gods."

In 1879, Charles Elliott Perkins, a friend of William Jackson Palmer, purchased 480 acres of land that included a portion of the present Garden of the Gods. Upon Perkin’s death, his family gave the land to the City of Colorado Springs in 1909, with the provision that it would be a free public park. Palmer had owned the Rock Ledge Ranch and upon his death it was donated to the city. It was designated a National Natural Landmark in 1971

The post card is from the White Border Era (1915 – 1930). The white border helped the printing companies to save money on ink by not having to print right to the edge of the post cards. This one was printed by the E. C. Kropp Company, a publisher and printer that began producing chromolithographic souvenir cards and private mailing cards in 1898 under the name Kropp. These cards were of much higher quality than those that would be printed under the E.C. Kropp name. They became the E.C. Kropp Company in 1907 and produced large numbers of national view-cards and other subjects. Their latter linen cards had a noticeably fine grain. The company was sold to L.L. Cook in 1956 and they are now part of the GAF Corp. U.S.