Cantra Loop, Contra Loop or Cantara Loop?

The scene on this post card is of a small section of what was then the Southern Pacific railroad in northern California. Today, of course, it is owned by the Union Pacific Railroad. I published some information about another post card with a picture of this loop 6 months ago on September 6, 2013. You can read about The Loop in that blog posting.

I wanted to show this post card because even though the name is on the post card twice (once on the front and once on the back) the printer and publisher both missed the fact that it is spelled incorrectly both times.

On the front The Cantara Loop (correct spelling) is spelled "Cantra". On the back it is spelled "Contra".

They certainly got the rest of the information right, though! If you have never been to northern California you have missed some very beautiful and dramatic scenery.

The printer of the post card is the H.H. Tammen Curio Company. The logo is the arrow in the middle of the card pointing up to the little space alien-type critter.

Mr. Tammen would probably be mortified at the double mistake; he was an owner and editor of the Denver Post for many years.

They were a novelty dealer and important publisher of national view-cards and Western themes in continuous tone and halftone lithography. Their logo does not appear on all their cards but other graphic elements are often remain the same.

H. H. Tammen (1856-1924) Harry Heye Tammen was born in Baltimore, Maryland on March 6, 1856, the son of a German immigrant pharmacist. He attended Knapps Academy in Baltimore, then worked in Philadelphia before moving to Denver in 1880.

With his partner Charles A. Stuart he worked as a Denver bartender in 1880, and in 1881 they established the firm of H.H. Tammen & Co. (which in 1896 became the H.H. Tammen Curio Co., with partners Carl Litzenberger and Joseph Cox) in Denver, Colorado. Deeply interested in the study of mineralogy, he published a promotional journal called Western Echoes magazine, "Devoted to Mineralogy, Natural History, Botany, &c. &c." Volume 1 Number 1 is copyrighted 1882.

In 1895 Tammen formed a partnership with F.G. Bonfils (whom he had met at the Chicago World's Fair) and they became co-owners and co-editors of the Denver Post. Their publishing business flourished, and Tammen's business successes made him a wealthy man. In 1917 Buffalo Bill Cody happened to die while in Denver, and Tammen (one of the city's biggest boosters) offered Cody's widow $10,000 if she would allow Cody to be buried in Denver; she accepted, and the ensuing funeral procession drew 50,000 people. He established the H.H. Tammen Trust in 1924, providing essential health care for children of families who cannot afford to pay. Tammen died July 19, 1924. The H.H. Tammen Curio Co. was in business until 1953, and possibly as late as 1962.

Here is the trademark of the publisher, but, for the life of me, I cannot connect it to any company. Any assistance you can provide will be GREATLY appreciated.

Obviously it is a company with two names; the first one starts with a B and the second one starts with an N.

Beautiful and Dangerous

The scene on this post card is of a small section of Southern Pacific railroad in northern California. It is located in very northern California, 150 miles east of Eureka and 200 miles north of Sacramento. To get to this loop in the tracks one can drive Highway 5 to Shasta Springs and get onto some side roads that take you to the Cantara Loop Road.

There are two similar sharp loops in the same area to help the trains to negotiate the mountainous grades. The Cantara Loop crosses the Sacramento River shortly after the river leaves Lake Siskiyou.

On the post card you can see the famous Mt. Shasta in the background.

This loop became infamously famous about 20 years ago when a train derailed right on the bridge and a tanker spilled its contents into the river.

Following is a quote from the website: http://dtsc.ca.gov/cantara.cfm, “The accident still ranks as the largest hazardous chemical spill in California history. In the darkness of a Sunday night, July 14, a Southern Pacific Railroad train rounding the Cantara Loop over one of the Sacramento River’s most pristine stretches jumped the track. A tanker carrying 19,000 gallons of the deadly soil sterilizer, metam sodium, toppled into the water below, a gash in its side. The surreal green chemical gushed into one of America’s most renowned trout-fishing rivers. The spill, accompanied by a toxic chemical cloud that sent area residents to hospitals, quickly stripped bare a 41-mile stretch of the Sacramento River. Wildlife experts estimate the agricultural fumigant designed to kill soil pests killed more than one million fish and thousands of trees during a three-day floating journey to Shasta Lake.”

I understand that mother earth has healed herself over the past 20 years.

The car was printed by Curt Teich and Company. It says in the middle of the back of the card that they used the “C. T. Photo Colorit” system to produce the card. The number on the front, bottom right (5A-H811) tells us that this is what has become known as a linen card, invented by Curt Teich. That is what the H in the number tells us. The 5A tells us that a) it was printed in the 1930s (that is what the A tells us) and to be exact, it was printed in 1935 (the 5 tells us that). It is production run number 811 for that year. There were 2701 production runs that year, so this came early in the year. The post card was mailed on September 11, 1938.

The card was published by no less than the Southern Pacific Company of San Francisco, California! Their description on the back of card is: “The train spends five hours crossing and recrossing the Sacramento River. This loop was devised to get out of the canyon and up on the plateau where stands Mount Shasta. … Nothing could be a more glorious tribute to the marvelous skill of the modern railroad engineer than the obstacles met with and overcome in building a railroad through this rugged country.”