One Hundred and Four Years Old Today

The Royal Gorge (also Grand Canyon of the Arkansas) is a canyon on the Arkansas River near Cañon City, Colorado. With a width of 50 feet (15 m) at its base and a few hundred feet at its top, and a depth of 1,250 feet (380 m) in places, the 10-mile-long canyon is a narrow, steep gorge through the granite of Fremont Peak. It is one of the deepest canyons in Colorado.

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 two-year struggle between the two railroads that would be known as the Royal Gorge War.

Unfortunately, I do not know anything about the printer of this post card. The only tell-tale sign of who this could be is the logo partially covered by the postmark and cancellation stripes. This logo is on so many of my post cards, and yet, I cannot definitely say who it belongs to. Some day....

I have two other post cards that are the same as this one. One has the publisher of it as being the Gray News Company of Salt Lake City, Utah. The message on that post card, mailed in 1912 says, "We are still in state of many wives". That is the entire message!!

The post mark on the top, middle of the card with the picture and the first message, above, is from 104 years ago today at 1:30 AM. It was sent from Montrose, CO to Rutherford, NJ. The address is written right-side up, but the message is upside down. It basically says that the sender is on her way to Jake's, she hopes the receiver is feeling better, that she will get over the see mother (maybe they are sisters) and that the sender hopes to be home toward the end of November.