Two Crozier Canyon in Arizona Post Cards

This is a picture of a Santa Fe Railroad train as it passes through Crozier Canyon in northwest Arizona (about 55 kilometers [35 miles] northeast of Kingman, Arizona). This post card was printed by the Detroit Publishing Company. More about this below.... However, about the picture: In 1857, President James Buchanan authorized Secretary of War Jefferson Davis (soon to be the president of the Confederate States), to find a road that would connect Fort Defiance in today's New Mexico with Fort Mohave in the extreme west of what is today Arizona. Davis delegated this task to Lieutenant Edward Beale. This expedition was to have a second purpose, to see if camels - natural desert animals in other parts of the world - would be useful for the US military applications. Davis authorized the purchase of about 30 camels at $1,000 per head. The entire party surveyed northern Arizona along the 37th parallel. Today, Interstate 40 and old Route 66 follow part of what became known as "Beale's Wagon Road". The camels proved their worth, but the military developed other priorities and sold off the camels. The legend of "Hi Jolly" is worth pursuing if you are interested in "American Camels".

As you can clearly see, this post card comes to us from the White Border Era of post card printing. Prior to this era the printed pictures went right to the outside borders of the post card. When one prints hundreds of thousands of post cards, cutting the picture off with an eight of an inch border of white can save over 10 percent of the ink. That means that one can get one extra post card per print run for every nine that one prints. That kind of savings adds up!!

This post card below is a duplicate of the one above. The difference is that this one comes to us from the Linen Card Era. This post card was printed by one of the pioneers who developed the textured card, Curt Otto Teich. He made the card for the Fred Harvey Company. Fred Harvey was the originator of the "Harvey House" chain of restaurants and hotels that he built along the railroads in the western United States. He started the company in the late 1800s and he died in 1901. So, this post card was published by the company that he left behind.

In 1897 Harvey took over the news stands for the A.T.&S.F. Railroad and began distributing postcards. Between 1901 and 1932 the Company contracted all their cards with the Detroit Publishing Company (thus, the first post card that we see above). These cards have an H prefix before their identification number, but in addition Detroit published many of Harvey’s images on their own. After Detroit closed, many of Harvey’s cards were contracted out to Curt Teich (thus, the second post card that we see here) among others.

These are the backs of the post cards. The first one is from the White Border Era, printed by the Detroit Publishing Company. You can see in the upper left-hand corner the word "PHOSTINT"; this is the trademark that they used for their own, unique printing process. The same area also shows us that Fred Harvey's company was involved in the publishing of this post card. The description is much longer on this post card than the one below.

The bottom one is the one that was printed by the Curt Otto Teich company. At the very bottom of the middle of this side of the card is the code: 7A-H2919 This tells me that the post card was printed by the Curt Otto Teich company in 1937 - indicated by the "7A" - for Fred Harvey's company. Notice that both companies indicate with an "H" that this job is for Fred Harvey - they just have different numbers for the post card lots.