One Hundred and Fourteen Years Old

The picture on the front of this post card belongs to a series of over 60 post cards that I call "Exaggerated Themes".

I posted some of them a few years ago, so I thought that I will fill in the blog with a few more in this next series of posts. The post cards were the brain child of Edward H. Mitchell. He was born April 27, 1867 in San Francisco and died from a heart attack in Palo Alto, California on October 24, 1932. Most of his postcards are about the West, he was very prolific, and his cards have great color for the time they were created. There are postcards being republished with other publishing companies that Mitchell owned or was a partner in, Pacific Novelty Co. and Souvenir Publishing Co. Mitchell rode the rails, which makes sense in his era. I am sure that he created many postcards about the railroads in exchange for discounted travel. I believe that is where the saying “The road of a thousand Wonders” which appears on many cards came from. Mitchell also was willing to have artists paint hats on people, he loved hats, and add other eye candy to sell postcards. At one point he was even putting sparkle on cards. All postcards printed after 1908 proudly proclaim 'Printed in the United States' on their backside. Edward H. Mitchell gave up postcard publishing around 1923.

The message on the back of this post card is almost 114 years old. It was mailed on July 20, 1910. It is a letter by Edith to her mother in San Francisco letting her know that Edith had spend some time at one of the baths in Alameda, California (that is east, across the bay from San Francisco).

I found this map from a time period of just after this post card message was written. It includes Sunny Cove Baths on the map; it is the bath that is the second one from the left.