This is too much fun to stop!!

We are posting another then and now blog this week. We have moved to the state of Wisconsin; Janesville to be exact. The picture on the front of this post card is showing a Chicago and Northwestern Railroad train as it crosses of the Rock River

near Janesville. The bridge is a good example of a Double-intersection Warren Deck Truss bridge and you can see a lot of it.

The bridge is still used today by the Union Pacific Railroad. It was built between 1907 and 1908 by the American Bridge Company of New York, who built the approach in 1908, and by the Bates and Rogers Construction Company of Chicago, Illinois, who built the main spans in 1907.

The longest span on the bridge is 125 feet, but the entire bridge is 720 feet long.






If you would like to see what it looks like today you can either take at peek at this:

Or use your GPS to get you to these latitude and longitude coordinates: +42.66932, -89.03281 (decimal degrees)
42°40'10" N, 89°01'58" W (degrees°minutes'seconds")

Unfortunately, the back of the post card has been damaged.

I would like to think that it was printed or published by the Rotograph Company, a major printer and publisher of postcards. It was founded by the Germans Ludwig Knackstedt of Knackstedt & Nather in partnership with Arthur Schwarz of Neue Photographische Gesellschaft (a major bromide photo paper manufacturer). They also took over the National Art Views Co. in 1904 to gain quick access to American views, and republished many of these images under the Rotograph name. A wide variety of card types were issued but they are best known for their view-cards in color rotogravure. Many postcards were printed in the Rotograph style without their logo on them. These early cards may have been private contracts made with the Rotograph Company or from orders placed directly with their printers in Germany. Rotograph produced about 60,000 postcards that were printed in Hamburg, Germany, by Stengel of Dresden, by Knackstedt & Nather of Nancy, France, and possibly by Reinike & Rubin of Magdeburg. While Rotograph produced large amounts cards in clearly defined lettered designated sets, they also produced unique small card sets. Rather than assign small sets a new designation, they were often given a taken letter prefix that corresponded to their subject.

One more "Then and Now"

We are moving back into Oregon for the subject matter of this posting. The picture on this post card is a view of a train arriving at the Union Station in Portland, Oregon prior to June 2, 1911. That is the date the post card was mailed.

Union Station does not look like the initial design which was created in 1882 by McKim, Mead, and White. If the builders had followed the blueprints of the original plans, the station would have been the largest train station in the world.

However, a smaller design was introduced by architects Van Brunt & Howe, and accepted in 1885. Construction of the station began in 1890. It was built by the Northern Pacific Terminal Company at a cost of $300,000. It opened on February 14, 1896. The signature piece of the structure is the 150 ft. tall Romanesque Revival clock tower.
This is a view of it taken in this century:

Neon signs were added to it in 1948. The signs read "Go by Train" on the northeast and southwest sides and "Union Station" on the northwest and southeast sides. The station was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.

The back of the card tell us that it was posted in the mail on June 2, 1911 and it was published by Gray News. Gray News was situated in Salt Lake City, Utah from 1906 to 1922. They were known to be a publisher and distributor of regional lithographic view-cards. Many images were produced of sparsely populated rugged areas, perhaps like Portland, Oregon in the early 1900s???

Then and Now, again

In February I posted on this blogspot about American Falls, Idaho. I did not include any pictures of what it looks like today. So, when I found this post card in my collection I decided to add to the theme started last week: "Then and Now". Here is a post card even older than the one from February. This one was posted in the mail on July 1, 1909. Although it is well after March 1, 1907, the writer obeyed the print on the back of the post card and wrote only the address. The message is on the front: "Cheyenne Wy Our train passes this Mary Watkins." This is what American Falls looks like today:

I always find it to be very sad when I cannot find out any information about the printer or the publisher of the post cards in my collection. I am very sad today.

Then and Now

The bridge in this post card was designed by the famous architect, Ralph Modjeski, the chief engineer for the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge which began construction in 1933. The Missouri Valley Bridge & Iron Company built the bridge by cantilevering it out from rock walls on both sides of the canyon.

The first steel for the bridge arrived on site on May 18, 1911, and was lowered by derrick to the bottom of the gorge. Men climbed down rope ladders to attach cables to the steel beams and the steel was hoisted back up both sides of the canyon as the beams were needed. The first train crossed the bridge only four months later on September 17, 1911.

The crossing of the Crooked River played a critical role in the competition to build a railroad up the Deschutes River Valley. The incentive for railroad construction was reaching the vast stands of timber south of Bend. The Oregon Trunk Railway, owned by Jim Hill of the Great Northern Railway, started up the west side of the Deschutes. In the meantime the Des Chutes Railroad, owned by Edward Harriman of the Union Pacific, started up the east side. At 126 miles both railroads had to cross a major tributary of the Deschutes, the Crooked River. There was only one place where the cliffs on both sides were close enough to build a bridge. Jim Hill had obtained the rights to the location when his Oregon Trunk Railroad acquired the Central Oregon Railroad Company on December 1, 1909. The Central Oregon had laid no track and the rights to the bridge site were its principal asset. Hill's acquisition of the location forced Harriman to negotiate a settlement whereby the Oregon Trunk would own almost the entire line from the Columbia to Bend but Harriman's company would have the right to use the track.

Through a series of mergers the rail line and the bridge has become part of the BNSF Railway. The Union Pacific still has the right to use the track.

This is what the bridge looks like today:

The post card was printed and published by the H. H. Tammen Curio Company. They were located at 1516 Arapahoe Street in Denver, Colorado from 1896 to 1953. The picture on the front does not have a white border around it, and the back is divided. From this we can conclude that the post card was printed some time between 1912 and 1915.