So Much Going on 110 Years Ago

I know. I know. The first thing you noticed is that there is no train in this train post card. You are absolutely right! And, I have several other post cards that do not have a train engine in them. I was attracted to this one because it is a beautiful depot. Plus, it was mailed before March 1, 1907. "Why March 1, 1907?" you ask. Because after that date people could actually legally write the message on the other side of the card, next to the address. The person who mailed this post card missed that date by two days. This is one of the very last post cards to be mailed according to the post office rules that forbade writing a message on the reverse side.

But, those two reasons aren't enough. When you read the message, you understand that this is one of the last times we will see a post card with that picture on the front. The message says, "Feb 26 '07. Hello Mother. This building burned to the ground today. Will write you soon. Chas." It is a sad occasion because this train station, The Sunset Depot, was built by the Southern Pacific Railroad and opened on July 31, 1903. It was only 3 and a half years old.

This is the back of the post card:

It is addressed to Charles' mother who lived in Portland, Texas. Portland is on the gulf of Mexico and San Antonio is 150 miles away, almost straight north, in the interior of the state.

The post card was printed and published by Raphael Tuck & Sons. If you look carefully, you will see a seal in the upper left corner of the post card. This is proof that Raphael Tuck & Sons are official Art Publishers to their majesties the king and queen of England. Not an easy gig to achieve. Their own logo is the little blob in the lower left of the post card. This information about the company comes from the Metropolitan Postcard Club of New York's website. http://www.metropostcard.com/ This Company was founded in 1866 by Raphael Tuck, a seller of furniture, pictures, and frames. In 1871, after concentrating on the picture side of the business, Tuck’s three sons joined the firm and they began printing their first Christmas cards. When Raphael retired in 1881, his son Adolph took over the family business. By 1894, a year after they were appointed official printers to Queen Victoria, they printed their first Souvenir Card. When postal regulations were finally changed after much lobbying by Tuck and others, it provided better opportunities to enter the postcard market. Tuck immediately began the printing of postcards in chromolithography, and their twelve card set of London became the first illustrated card set in England. By 1899 they became the first publisher to print postcards in a larger size, what we now call standard. They went on to publish a very wide variety of card types and printed matter, including many innovative designs, eventually becoming a major publishing house. Not one to miss an opportunity, Tuck also became a major supplier of postcard accessories such as albums and display frames for cards.

107 Years Ago Today - Again!

On February 9th I posted a card that was 107 years old on that day. That one was about Mt. Tamalpais in California. This post card is also 107 years old - today. The feature of this post card is the little bit in the lower left of the card: it is Phantom Canyon. The following is taken from our good friends at Wikipedia:

"Phantom Canyon Road today is an old railroad grade dating back to 1894. It once connected the gold-mining towns of Cripple Creek and Victor (Teller County) to Florence (Fremont County). It is arguably the most scenic part of the Gold Belt Scenic Byway. Ghosts from the past reportedly still roam the canyon, making it a fine place for camping with a twist! The canyon got its name in the late 1800s when some train passengers claimed to have seen walking along the tracks the ghost of a prisoner, a man who had been executed in the Colorado State Penitentiary a few days earlier. The route is dotted with ghost towns like Adelaide, Wilbur, and Alta Vista, which were washed away in devastating floods or abandoned when the railroad closed in 1912. What little is left of the ghost towns is now mostly on private land, though some traces can be seen from the road. The road also boasts two iconic tunnels and one of the original railroad steel bridges. It is possible to access a less-traveled hiking trail to the Beaver Creek State Wildlife Area from this bridge."

You can see why the train would stop like it did in the picture on the front of this post card. Both for the beauty and for the adventure... can you find the ghost?

The post card title is telling us that this train is on the "Moffat Road". The Moffat Road is a short cut tunnel through the Rocky Mountains in Colorado.

It was conceived and begun by David Moffat, a visionary in Colorado railroading. The solid black, squiggly line is the route the railroad used to have to take to get across the mountains safely and at a proper grade. The dotted line across the bottom of the map shows the very long tunnel short cut that Mr. Moffat began to build. These two sentences come from the website, MoffatRailroadMuseum.org: The "Moffat Road" was intended to put Denver on a transcontinental railroad but that didn't happen until 1928 when the Moffat Tunnel (6.2 miles long - the third longest in the country) was finished. That was 17 years after David Moffat had died.

This is the back of the post card. It contains an apology from Bert to his sister. It seems that she sent him a post card "bawling him out" for not writing to her. What I find more interesting is that the address is to her with only General Delivery in St. Petersburg, Florida. I was thinking "what a huge population in which to find 'Mrs. T. I. Frost'". The I looked up the population of St. Petersburg in 1910 (the year before this post card was mailed). It contained an entire 4,127 people. Probably not like looking for a needle in a haystack like I had originally thought.

The post card was published by the Great Western Post Card & Novelty Company. They existed from 1908 to 1970 and they focused on scenes from Colorado. The post card was printed in Germany. World War I had not erupted yet to stop the delivery of high quality post cards from the German printed presses.

105 Years Ago on the Southern Pacific Railroad

The picture on this post card says that it shows a steam locomotive coming out of the protection of a Snow Shed.

Snow sheds were very common in the early days of trains going through mountains that threatened the rail lines with avalanche potential. This particular snow shed is of a unique variety: it is purely an added drawing to a beautiful view of some mountains in the background and a train track in the foreground. I suspected it from the moment I saw it. But, to verify it, I used a powerful (15x) magnifying glass that a very good friend of mine gave to me. Through it I can see the gap between the mountain side and the shed. They would never build a protector from avalanches in a way in which the avalanche could take the shed with it by hitting the uphill-side straight on. Plus, the engine on the card is drawn with white lines on the black background.

Anyway, it was obviously attractive enough to tempt Josie to purchase it. She used it to write to Arthur to ask him why she has not heard from him for over a month!

She wrote the card on February 15, 1913. It was mailed from Truckee, California where they would be familiar with Snow Sheds on the train lines.

One Hundred Seven Years Ago

For this post we are staying in California. Instead of the orange groves of the south, we are up north near San Francisco.

This is a scene from the Mt. Tamalpais Railway. To get to ride to the top of Mount Tam in 1911 you would take a ferry to Sausalito and then take a local to the town of Mill Valley. You would change trains in Mill Valley and board the one of the cars of the Mount Tam railway that were pushed up the top of the 2,600 foot hill by a steam engine. The railroad climbed from the town centre of Mill Valley up Mt. Tamalpais from 1896 to 1929. The line was dubbed ‘The Crookedest Railroad in the World’ for the 281 curves that were needed to climb the top of 2,600-foot peak. Official service on the railroad began on August 23, 1896. At that time the round-trip fare from Mill Valley was $1, and from San Francisco, $1.40, including the Sausalito ferry and train connections. There were two steam engines, the original 20-ton Shay (#498) and a 30-ton Heisler. (#2) I cannot see the engine well enough on this post card to know which it is. There were also six open, canopy-top observation cars, one half-enclosed former San Francisco cable car, and two flat-cars. The above information was taken from: www.mendorailhistory.org/1_railroads/nwp/mount-tam.html

This post card was written on Thursday, February 9th and mailed the same day (107 years ago today). It contains a message to Mrs. Mann of Everett, Washington telling her that, while they are on their way to Los Angeles, they have arrived in San Francisco and the trip so far has been pleasant. Here is the post card's back:

Oranges in February of 1909, but...

... but are these oranges really located in Florida? On the front of this featured post card it says, "A January Scene - Riding Through Orange Groves in Florida" across the top. I am not questioning whether oranges grow in the winter (January, as listed on the post card). In fact, I looked up the growing season of oranges in Florida. I found out that the Early Harvest Season is from October to January. The oranges harvested at this time are Hamlins, Parson Browns and Navels. The Mid Harvest Season includes the picking of Sunstar, Gardner and Sanjuinelli oranges from December to March. The Late Season is when the Valencias (50% of the harvest) are picked from March to June. I do, however, question where this picture was actually taken. It just so happens that I have another post cards in my collection that across the top is written, "Entering California through Orange Groves in Mid winter". Normally, I would not think anything of this. But, today I have to question where the pictures were taken; or is it where THE PICTURE was taken. Here are the two post cards, one on top of the other:

It is the exact same picture. Upon closer examination, I would declare the Florida picture to be the original and the other a copy. The details in the top post card are clearer; there are two people right behind the engine; the oranges do not look like paint brush dots; the train itself has much more detail; and, the telegraph pole to the right looks more like a telegraph pole. I do have to say that the printer has done a marvelous job of changing the ground between the trough and the trees.

Another hint about which came first might be the dates on which they were mailed. This featured post card for today was mailed today in 1909 (109 years ago) from Florida. The other was mailed in 1923 from California.

The feature post card was made in Germany, a typical trait of post cards before World War I. The printing processes in Germany were superior to those in the USA. The American printers had a lot of quick catching up to do to fill in the gap the war left. So much so that the period before World War I is known as The Golden Age of Post Cards.

Here is the back of the post card: it looks like someone moved to Florida and is writing to a friend in Massachusetts to let the friend know that it is different but acceptable.