Longest Wharf in the World

The “Longest Warf in the World”, as shown on this post card,

does not exist today. It was the victim of a power struggle among several parties. In the end, after all the fighting was over, it was slowly dismantled over time.

It was originally conceived by the Southern Pacific Railroad as a means to develop more business for them and for the city of Santa Monica. Los Angeles does not have a natural harbour. In order to create business, Collis Huntington (one of the big four that invested in the Central Pacific Railroad, which worked with the Union Pacific Railroad to build the transcontinental railroad) and John Jones (senator from Nevada and founder of Santa Monica) joined forces to come up with the idea of the wharf. It was built by the Southern Pacific Railroad between 1892 and 1894. The Pier wharf had a double track rail track lines to move cargo and freight on and off the pier quickly. When it opened it became the longest wharf in the world. It was almost a mile long at 4,700 feet.

During its lifetime it served both cargo and passenger trains by diverting shipping business from the nearby San Pedro Bay. A struggle between the newly opened wharf and the port of Los Angeles at San Pedro ended in 1897 when San Pedro was declared the port of choice. Construction of a breakwater in San Pedro started in 1899 and the Los Angeles Harbor Commission was founded in 1907. San Pedro Bay port area was annexed to Los Angeles in 1909. The Santa Monica wharf thus lost much of it traffic to San Pedro. Santa Monica almost became as important as the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro as major shipping port. Political struggle between the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and the Southern Pacific Railroad put an end to the Santa Monica wharf.

It served as a cargo and passenger port until 1913, and in 1919 removal of the wharf started. The wharf, the 1000 foot tip of the pier, was removed by 1920. The remaining 3,600 feet of pier was used as a run-down fishing pier until 1933, when the remainder of the pier was removed.

While I am showing you the back of the post card here, the name of the publisher is on the front of the card in the left margin. The post card was published by the E. P. Charlton Company.

They existed from 1899 to 1912 in San Francisco, California. Earl Perry Charlton and Seymour Knox opened their first 5 & 10 cent store in Fall River, MA in 1890. Highly successful they had 9 east coast stores when they sold their business out to F. W. Woolworth in 1899. Charlton headed west with his proceeds to open up a new chain of stores. The Lewis & Clark exposition in 1905 provided impedes for him to start publishing postcards. Afterwards he continued to publish and distribute lithographic cards through his 52 chain stores until he merged with Woolworths in 1912. Charlton served there as Vice President.

A Train - Barely

I guess that sometimes I got a bit desperate when it came to collecting the post cards in my collection. There are over 3,000 in the collection and, when I looked at this one, I asked myself, "Self, why did you add this one? That train is barely in the picture." Then I turned the post card over

and saw that the reason for collecting it is not in the scene; it is on the back. This post card was made using the first ever invented method for developing pictures under artificial light!!
The Eastman Kodak company owned the rights to the process when this post card was made. The company came up with some codes to help us

know the approximate era the photos were developed. You can clearly see that the VELOX method has been used. The code for the time frame is in the four corners of the little box where the postage stamp should be placed. The diamonds in the four corners indicate that this was printed between 1907 and 1914.

Here is a little bit of information about the inventor of the VELOX method. It is taken from here: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leo-Baekeland#ref22160
Leo Baekeland, in full Leo Hendrik Baekeland, (born November 14, 1863, Ghent, Belgium—died February 23, 1944, Beacon, New York, U.S.), U.S. industrial chemist who helped found the modern plastics industry through his invention of Bakelite, the first thermosetting plastic (a plastic that does not soften when heated).

Baekeland received his doctorate maxima cum laude from the University of Ghent at the age of 21 and taught there until 1889, when he went to the U.S. and joined a photographic firm. He soon set up his own company to manufacture his invention, Velox, a photographic paper that could be developed under artificial light. Velox was the first commercially successful photographic paper. In 1899 Baekeland sold his company and rights to the paper to the U.S. inventor George Eastman for somewhere near $1,000,000 [at the beginning of the 20th century!].

And this is the front of the post card. You know everything that I know about the picture.

Franco-British Expo of 1908

This post card is in my collection because the front picture has train tracks and the title says, "Canadian Scenic Railway..." It also mentions the

"Franco-British Exhibition, London, 1908". I looked up what the Exhibition was all about. This is what I found:

The information below has been taken directly from this website: http://jdpecon.com/expo/wflondon1908.html

It's an odd exhibition for many reasons. Considered an outstanding success at the time, the exposition, confined to the nations and colonies of the British Empire and French Empire, was actually a clarion call that both of those empires were waning and were ceasing to be competitive with the rest of the world that was barred from participation. Twinned with the Olympic Games, a poor second cousin to international expositions at the time, they were managed by the British Olympic Committee, which managed them well. The Olympics were held in the Great Stadium, sixty-eight thousand seats, later renamed the White City Stadium after the fair's buildings, plastered bright white in a dazzing display. The reason for hosting a colonial exposition with only France and Great Britain involved was the 1904 Entente Cordiale peace accord. Apparently they wanted to keep that peace to themselves, but they may have wanted to clue in their colonial possessions, who were beginning to want their independence over peace.

The Franco-British exhibition had large scale leisure attractions, the first for a British exhibition. Kiralfy built an open-air theatre for three thousand and a two hour show, the Alfresco Spectacular, Our Indian Empire which mesmorized visitors on how the British had civilized India. There was also the Flip-Flap ride and fireworks three nights a week. Thirty thousand people attended the opening ceremonies with the Prince and Princess of Wales in attendance. By 6 o'clock on opening day, 123,000 people had visited.

Attendance at the amusement attractions:
Flip-Flap 1,110,800;
Mountain Scenic Railway 2,800,000; This is the exhibit on the front of this post card!!
The Spiral 653,600;
The Canadian Tobaggan 807,000;
Old London 500,000+;
The Mountain Slide 250,000;
The Johnstown Flood 715,000;
The Stereomatus 425,000.
Down the left-hand side of the back of this post card it mentions that it was published by Valentine & Sons Limited from Dundee in Scotland, London in England and New York in the USA; it does not mention that there were two offices in Canada in Montreal and Toronto at that time.

Build the Tunnel

The front of this post card shows a bit of history that no longer exists. You are looking at one of 31 snow sheds built by the Canadian Pacific Railway

in the Roger Pass. When Major Albert Rogers discovered the pass through the Selkirk Mountains, the owners of the Canadian Pacific Railway were happy that an "easy" route through the Canadian Rockies had been found. He was rewarded with $5,000 and the fact that he would be the namesake of the pass he discovered.

The railway was built through Rogers Pass in 1884. In a previous post, last year, I showcased a post card of the Stoney Creek Bridge, one of the largest bridges on the CPR right of way. This was only one of many bridges that had to be built. The tracks also followed a series of loops in order to maintain a safe grade for the locomotives. Despite all of their efforts to avoid steep hills and avalanche areas, danger lurked each winter. So much so that after the winter of 1885 31 different snow sheds were constructed over a total of six and a half kilometers of tracks. Despite their best efforts, avalanches continued to wreck havoc on the railway. Eight people lost their lives when, in 1899, an avalanche took out a train station in the pass. The worse loss of life occurred on March 4, 1910 when the crew clearing out one avalanche were killed by a second avalanche that came from the other side of the tracks. Sixty two people died that day.

This is when the railway decided that it was the safest option to build the Connaught Tunnel. It was completed in 1916. The rails you see in this post card were abandoned and removed.

The post card was published by the Canadian office for Valentine’s of Dundee, Scotland. From 1907 to 1923 they published souvenir books,

greeting cards and view-cards of Canadian scenery in sets numbered with a three digit prefix and a three digit suffix. These tinted halftone and collotype cards were printed in Great Britain. Valentine sold their Canadian branch in 1923. This particular card only shows (extremely faintly and covered with handwriting) that there were two offices in Canada: Montreal and Toronto. For a very short time they also had an office in Winnipeg.

OUCH!! Don't Do That...

The picture on this post card shows a train exiting from the lower of two spiral tunnels built by the Canadian Pacific Railway to solve a problem of trains losing control on "The Big Hill" and killing people on board. This

happened because the grade of The Big Hill was 4.5%. The very expensive solution to this challenge was to bore two spiral tunnels through two different mountains along where trains entered onto The Big Hill as they traveled west. It is at the beginning of the Kicking Horse River Canyon.

From Wikipedia: The route decided upon called for two tunnels driven in three-quarter circles into the valley walls. The higher tunnel, "number one", is about 1,000 yards (0.91 km) in length and runs under Cathedral Mountain, to the south of the original track. When the new line emerges from this tunnel it has doubled back, running beneath itself and 50 feet (15 m) lower. It then descends the valley side in almost the opposite direction to its previous course before crossing the Kicking Horse River and entering Mount Ogden to the north. This lower tunnel, "number two", is a few yards shorter than "number one" and the descent is again about 50 feet. From the exit of this tunnel the line continues down the valley in the original direction, towards Field. The constructions and extra track effectively double the length of the climb and reduce the ruling gradient to 2.2%.

The reason the title of this post is "OUCH!!!" is because of what a stamp collector did to the post card. You can see in the upper right-hand corner that someone has removed the stamp, leaving an unsightly scar. This has reduced the monetary value of the post card to a collector to minimal. The post mark indicates that this post card is 97 years old (August 14, 1922); and, that it was mailed only 13 years after the Spiral Tunnels were completed. That makes it valuable. Having the stamp ripped off makes it almost valueless. OUCH!!!

The card was published by The Valentine and Sons United Publishing Co. The Canadian offices for Valentine’s of Dundee, Scotland were in Montreal, Toronto and, for a short time, Winnipeg.

This post card documents the short period in which they had an office in Winnipeg (another reason for this card to have been valuable to a collector). They published souvenir books, greeting cards and view-cards of Canadian scenery in sets numbered with a three digit prefix and a three digit suffix. These tinted halftone and collotype cards were printed in Great Britain. Valentine sold their Canadian branch in 1923.