The Devil's Slide

The geological formation on the front of this post card is called “Devil’s Slide”.

It is a chute of two pretty parallel slabs of limestone 6 meters (20 feet) apart, each 12 meters (40 feet) high and 30.5 meters (200 feet) long. This slide is near Croydon, Utah in Weber Canyon. I blogged about Croyden on January 5, 2018 and about Weber (It’s pronounced Weeber) Canyon on both October 18, 2014 and December 16, 2014.

The first maps of the area referred to phenomenon Weber Canyon as “Gutter Defile”.
According to Lynn Arave on this website: https://www.standard.net/what-s-the-story-behind-devil-s-slide-in-morgan/article_08d618c3-93e2-5ead-b6b5-f0d1153434b0.html

“James John Walker (1830-1896), an early resident of Croydon and a railroad worker, is very likely the first person to have called it Devil’s Slide. A Walker family history states that James Walker was a contractor on the railroad, installing the first tracks through upper Weber Canyon. Probably around 1868, he was asked (being a local resident) by a railroad crew what to call this unusual rocky chute and his reply was Devil’s Slide and the title stuck. The first official mention of that name for the rock formation in a newspaper was in 1875. By 1904, someone discovered that the limestone was not just in the geological formation, but was abundant in the area. The Portland Cement Company set up a town and tried to name it Portland, after itself. But, in 1907 the post office was reflecting the name Devils Slide. The town reached its heyday in the late 1920s, before the Great Depression, when it boasted 529 residents. By the 1940s, its school closed and by the 1980s, only a few families still resided there. Soon after, the cement company closed the town and today a gravel pit and rubble mostly cover what remains of this ghost town. Ogden began promoting Devil’s Slide as a tourist attraction in the mid 1920s, with signs. Devil’s Gate, at the lower end of Weber Canyon, was also boasted of in numerous Standard-Examiner reports of the 1920s. ” - End of article by Lynn Arave.

This is the back of the post card:

There isn't a lot to know about the publisher of this post card. The name down the left-hand side says that it was published by The Gray News Company out of Salt Lake City, Utah. The company was a publisher and distributor of regional lithographic view-cards. Many images were produced of sparsely populated rugged areas. They only existed for 16 years; between 1906 and 1922. That makes this post card almost 100 years old! However, looking at the number at the bottom, middle of the post card raised my curiosity.

It looked an awful lot like a file number that Curt Otto Teich's company would use when they printed the post card for The Grey News Company. I looked at my files and saw this: "1908-1928 Cards numbered A or R 1 to 124180. The cards they printed for Woolworth have a W prefix. The letter N prefix was used to designate a reprinted image from this series." I thought that I was on the right track; then I saw this:

That little logo under the letter "T" is the company logo for Curt Otto Teich's company!! So, doing some math, if this is lot 7967 out of 124,180 printed between 1908 and 1928, this post card was probably printed in April of 1909. This does make sense because this is a divided back era post card. That era covers from 1907 to 1915. That means that this post card would be over 100 years old!