Really? The Toonerville Trolley?

The hand-written caption at the bottom of this post card reads, “The ‘Toonerville Trolley’ at the Grand Coulee Dam, Wash., taking tourists from the Vista House to the Powerhouse.” The Grand Coulee Dam is a concrete gravity dam on the Columbia River in the state of Washington. Constructed between 1933 and 1942, it was built to produce hydroelectric power and provide irrigation water. Construction began on July 16,1933 and it concluded on June 1, 1942. Evidently, soon after it was opened, and as part of the public relations campaign to convince the public of the need for the dam, they built a short railroad to take tourists on a tour of the dam. This train was called the “Toonerville Trolley”. That is what you see on the front of this post card. Researching something with a name like “Toonerville Trolley” in it is very difficult. There are so many paths to follow! Toonerville Trolley was part of a popular comic strip and many things became known as the Toonerville Trolley. I did find another post card on line and this caption was part of the front of the card. “Tourist Train, Grand Coulee Dam. One of the world’s shortest railroads – less than a half mile long – hauls more than 200,000 people each year from the Vista House to the power house for a personally conducted tour of the world’s greatest power producer.” The tourist train did not last very long. While doing more research, I found a picture from October 21, 1949. The caption reads, “Locomotive for tourist railroad being removed as first step in abandoning route for river-channel improvement work.”

This post card was printed using EKC paper. That process lasted between 1939 and 1940. This and the copyright date in the lower right-hand corner of the picture (1947) tell us the age of this post card. It was published by Western Souvenirs.

A Short-lived History Caught in a Post Card

The history below is an edited version taken from this website: http://www.pnwc-nrhs.org/hs_or_n.html The Oregon-Washington Railroad & Navigation Company A brief history by Glenn Laubaugh Although the name itself has been long gone, what was once the Oregon Railway & Navigation Company (OR&N) and later the Oregon-Washington Railroad and Navigation company (OWR&N), the railroad to which this post card refers in the upper right-hand corner in the title, is now part of the Union Pacific Railroad (UP) and has been for over a century. In 1878 and 1879, purchase negotiations were held between Captain Ainsworth, who owned the Oregon Steam Navigation Company and its related portage railroad operations, and the newly incorporated Oregon Railway & Navigation Company. By March 31, 1880, all operation was being performed under the OR&N name. In mid-1883 the line became part of a transcontinental link, when the Northern Pacific Railroad (NP) was completed between Wallula and St. Paul, Min., providing the first all-rail link with the rest of the nation's railroad system. In 1906 through 1911, the ORR&N and the Oregon Trunk completed a railroad along

the Deschutes River (the river in the picture on this post card) into central Oregon. During this period, the company came to be called the Oregon-Washington Railroad & Navigation Company. The Union Pacific had adopted the policy of building new railroads by using subsidiary companies, possibly to protect the parent company from possible financial disasters. The Oregon-Washington Railroad & Navigation Company was incorporated in Oregon in late 1910. In the 1930's, minor abandonments of the company's Oregon lines occurred. This included partial abandonment of the line to Homestead, as well as joint operation with the Spokane, Portland & Seattle of the Oregon Trunk railroad line from the Columbia River south to Bend. Other abandonments during this period were concentrated in Idaho and Washington, and therefore are not recorded here. From the 1930's through the 1960's, the railroad's main line was rebuilt to accommodate the various river dam projects constructed on the Snake River and Columbia River. As time went on, the O-WR&N name slowly fell into disuse. Although in later years steam locomotives still carried that name, the tenders of the locomotives had the Union Pacific emblem on them. All diesel locomotives came lettered and painted in Union Pacific colors, and therefore the Oregon-Washington Railroad & Navigation company name become much less visible as time went on. Although corporate existence of the O-WR&N would continue afterward, for practical purposes of this brief history, the Union Pacific will be considered to have become the successor to the O-WR&N around 1950.

The post card was published by the short-lived Portland Post Card Company. The company only existed from 1908 to 1916. While it was around it published many view-cards of scenes from the American West coast including Alaska. They were the official publisher of postcards for the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in 1909.

The code in the bottom-center of the post card leads me to believe that it was printed by Curt Otto Teich. 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. The number at the bottom, when interpolated into their numbering system, put the card as being printed in 1913. That is a real possibility because the railroad company used that name in that year, too.

Adding to the Intrigue of the Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railroad

There is definitely a picture of a train on the front of this post card. However, the caption on the back does not tell us the type of locomotive it is. When one looks more closely, one can think that the reason they do not tell us what kind of locomotive it is, is because it is drawn in. They have drawn in a 4-6-4 (Hudson) engine.

The fact that the tracks are on the north shore of the Columbia River tells me that, more than likely, it is on the line owned by the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway Company. On March 23, 2022 I blogged about how this company came into being and how it made it into Oregon, against all odds. It is a good read; I like rooting for the underdogs. The back of the post card tells us that this picture is of the Cape Horn Palisades and the North Bank Railroad tunnel. The following information was taken from this website: http://columbiariverimages.com/Regions/Places/north_bank_road.html The Great Northern Railway and Northern Pacific Railroad, competitors in the transcontinental business, launched the Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway in 1905 and built a line along the north side of the Columbia River. This line was known as "The North Bank Road", "The North Bank Railroad", "Columbia River Scenic Route", and "The Northwest’s Own Railway". The tracks were started in October 1905 and completed in February 1908, with a celebration being held on March 11th at Sheridan Point upstream of the Fort Rains Blockhouse location. On March 19th, regular passenger service between Vancouver and Pasco was begun. The journey took eight hours.

The post card was printed by our good friend, Curt Otto Teich. The code at the top of the card (A-55943) gives a hint that this may have been printed in 1917. The post card is from the White Border Era, so the year is a real possibility. This website: http://www.pdxhistory.com/html/post_card_history.html tells us about the publisher, Lipschuetz & Katz from Portland, Oregon. Oregon’s biggest event happened just as Post Cards began to boom in popularity. The Lewis & Clark Exposition opened in 1905 as Portland took center stage in its own World’s Fair. This event was single-handedly responsible for the production of 450 different post cards. Beautiful European-produced lithographs made up the bulk of these post cards. Also produced at the fair were leather, wood, copper and aluminum post cards. Several Portland post card publishers got their start at the Lewis & Clark Expo: B.B. Rich and D.M. Averill, as well as E.P. Charlton. Lipschuetz & Katz started publishing post cards in the years after the Expo.

The First Train to Have a Vacuum Cleaner

Wikipedia says: The Great Northern Railway (reporting mark GN) was an American Class I railroad. Running from Saint Paul, Minnesota, to Seattle, Washington, it was the creation of 19th-century railroad entrepreneur James J. Hill and was developed from the Saint Paul & Pacific Railroad. The Great Northern's route was the northernmost transcontinental railroad route in the U.S. It is on this route that the picture on the front of this post card was

taken. The title says that the shot was taken near Scenic, Washington – a town about 75 miles east of Seattle. The train in the picture is the “Oriental Limited. This website: https://www.gnflyer.com/1924original.html tells us this about the Oriental Limited. The Great Northern Railway inaugurated transcontinental passenger service between Seattle and St Paul on June 18, 1893 and continued operations until April 1, 1971 when Amtrak assumed all passenger service. During the intervening 78 years, Great Northern provided first class passenger train service over its routes to the Northwest. During most of this period, there were two first class trains serving the route, although one was always regarded as the premier train. That premier train carried several different names through the years. Between 1893 and 1905 the railway's standard bearer carried the monikers of the Great Northern Flyer, the Oregonian, and the Great Northern Express. Between 1905 and 1929, the Great Northern Railway's crack transcontinental was called the Oriental Limited, named for the Asiatic commerce which had been one of J.J. Hill's motivating objectives in building the railroad itself. From 1929 until the end of passenger service operations, the premier train was known as the Empire Builder, in tribute to Mr. Hill. The new Oriental placed in service on May 23, 1909, carried an RPO/Bag, Day Coach, Tourist Sleeper, Diner, 12-1 and 16 section Standard Sleepers, and a Five Compartment Observation. 12-1 sleepers bore the names of Oriental ports such as Tokio (sic), Fujiyama, Yokohama, Manila and Foochuo. The Oriental's Observation Car had mahogany and cocoa finish like an English club and featured a large oval smoker separating the compartments from the lounge. This train was the first Oriental to be equipped with a vacuum cleaner.

The post card was published by The C.H. Shaver News Service out of Seattle, Washington. I could find no information about the company. I do know that there were many news distribution companies that ended their names with “News Service” or “News Company” who were partners with The American News Company (ANC). The ANC was the printer of this post card. They worked out of 119 Nassau Street, New York, NY between 1864 and 1969 and claimed to be the largest publisher and distributor of books, magazines, newspapers, and postcards in the United States exclusively through their national network of affiliated news agencies. Their earliest cards were printed as black and white views, followed by their lithographic Polychromes. Other series were added each being printed in a different manner. Some of these techniques have a specific letter prefix to their numbers, while others kept adding letter prefixes sequentially from A as they ran out of four or five digit numbers assigned to that card. Many cards with undivided backs were later reprinted with divided backs after 1907. Many small publishers also contracted out postcards though the American News Company. Their printers in Leipzig, Dresden and Berlin, Germany produced most of their cards, but many were manufactured in France and the United States as well. They produced cards by various processes using different trade names... This post card

used the Excelsior trade name. It was a gravure card printed in Germany. It was marketed as their highest quality black & white card, and most customers chose this type over the cheaper halftone version. Almost all cards in this series are printed in black & white, but there are some examples issued in monochromes of blue and sepia as well as more rare cards that were printed in color and hand colored. Prefixes A, B, D, F (1904-1920), Prefixes AA for Blue, Sepia & Hand colored cards (1908-1925). This information about the American News Company came from the Metropolitan Post Card Club of New York. http://www.metropostcard.com/publishersa1.html

Bridge, What Bridge?

The information about the bridge on the front of this post card was taken from this website: https://spokanehistorical.org/items/show/507 The river that lent its name to Spokane has also been a barrier to the development of the city. No sooner was Spokane established than city fathers looked for places to bridge the raging currents. Today’s Monroe Street Bridge, a Spokane landmark, is the third bridge on this site.

The first Monroe Street Bridge was constructed of wood and built with horses and wagons in mind. The city, the Cable Railway Company, and property owners along Monroe Street split the cost of $42,500.00 to build the bridge. A new Monroe Street Bridge constructed of steel was completed in 1890. The steel bridge represented a step towards modernity, and was completed just in time to accommodate an unprecedented time of expansion for the city. The bridge boasted updates such as overhead lighting and the ability to accommodate doubled-tracked streetcars. But the new bridge soon became a source of controversy. It was immediately apparent that the bridge vibrated heavily, perhaps dangerously, with any sort of traffic. In 1905 the bridge was deemed unsafe by National Good Roads Association, and the next year a bridge expert labeled the bridge an accident waiting to happen: “Should a street car run off the track, or a bunch of steers be driven over it, the whole thing might collapse.” In 1907 the elephants of the Ringling Brother’s Circus refused to walk across the shaky span. Three years later the south side of the bridge collapsed after a mudslide. Spokane had plenty of trouble with its bridges in those days. In 1915, the Division Street Bridge collapsed, dropping a street car into the river resulting in 5 deaths and twelve injuries. These tragedies fueled an intense demand for safer concrete-arch bridges. A grand new Monroe Street Bridge was designed by Spokane City Engineer John Chester Ralston, and Spokane’s most celebrated architects: Kirtland K. Cutter and Karl G. Malmgren. Construction over the 140-feet deep and 1,500 feet wide gorge was challenged by severe windstorms, high water levels, and swift-moving currents. Two laborers died and over fifty were injured. Ralston was removed from the project after he was accused of stealing the design from Rocky River Bridge in Cleveland, and replaced by his assistant. Today’s Monroe Street Bridge opened November 23, 1911 with over 3,000 Spokane citizens on hand to celebrate. It was the world’s largest concrete arch-bridge. In 1914, just a few years after completion of this visual landmark, the city fathers permitted a railroad bridge to be built right over the top of it, marring the beauty of the structure. The Great Northern Railroad bridge remained in place for over half a century, until it was removed as part of the preparations for Expo 74. Today the Monroe Street Bridge today looks very much as it did in 1911, thanks to the removal of the railroad bridge and a 2003-2005 reconstruction project. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975, all but the central span of the bridge was demolished and completely reconstructed starting in 2003. Reconstruction was necessary because by the 1990s the bridge had begun to drop large chucks of concrete into the river below. The rebuilding preserved the structural features from the original 1911 design, including Cutter and Malmgren’s life-size buffalo skulls, wagon wheels, wagon pavilions, and chain handrails that embody the pioneer spirit of Spokane’s earliest settlers. The bridge reopened in September 2005.

The post card was printed by Metropolitan MetroCraft (1939 – 1984) a major printer of linen and photochrome postcards displaying a variety of subjects. They also printed postcards for many other publishers. A good number of Metrocraft’s early photochrome postcards retained the use of retouchers that had worked on their linens. These cards have a very distinct look before they went over to a completely uniform photographic means of natural color reproduction. The information about the publisher of this post card was taken from this website: https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2016/aug/08/then-and-now-john-w-graham-and-co/ John W. Graham, born 1860 in Rockport, Indiana, knew how to sell. He delivered newspapers, sold apples on the street with his brother James and helped his dad trade farm animals up and down the Ohio River. At the age of 10, he set up a little table in a general store where he sold tablets, ink and writing paper. While working in a Minneapolis stationery store in 1887, he read about a promising Western boomtown in the Washington territory. He stepped off the train in Spokane in 1888. The rustic town didn’t appeal to him, so he decided to hop back on the evening train and go to Seattle. But he had dropped two shirts at a Chinese laundry and he had to stay until the next day to get them back. The delay changed his mind and he took a job in the stationery shop of Sylvester Heath. Within a year, Heath’s shop was burned to the ground in Spokane’s great fire in August of 1889. Heath decided not to rebuild, so Graham set up a tent on the ashes of Heath’s store and went into business. For the next 80 years, John W. Graham and Co. was Spokane’s place to buy books, magazines, stationery, art and office supplies, cameras and film, paint, wallpaper, furniture and gifts. Graham’s slogan was “If it’s made of paper, we have it.” Graham’s store was first located in the Great Eastern Building until it was destroyed by fire in 1898. The next location, on the 700 block of West Sprague Avenue, extending to First Avenue on the building’s upper floors, was the store’s most enduring location. Historian Carolyn Hage Nunemaker, in her book of Spokane photographs from the 1930s and 1940s, said Graham’s was five stories of open showrooms and interesting nooks and crannies. “A stranger wandering in might have gotten lost in the peculiar arrangement, but those of us who knew its secrets felt comfortably familiar there,” she wrote. For many years, Graham’s even had the largest toy department in Spokane. John Graham died of a heart attack in June 1941 at the age of 81. A group of his employees bought the business from his estate in 1951. The business stayed in the old building until 1973, when the structure was torn down to make way for the Washington Trust Bank building. The store moved to a smaller location at Riverside Avenue and Stevens Street for a few years, and was bought out by Portland-based bookseller J.K. Gill Co. around 1980.

A Climax Logging Steam Locomotive (4 of 5)

The locomotive featured on the front of this post card is a Climax locomotive. This engine was built by The Climax Manufacturing Company and was used by the Webb Logging & Timber Company in Washington State. The Climax locomotive is one of the three most popular designs of steam locomotives used in the logging industry. This post is continuing the theme of the various designs, so a quick glance back into the previous posts will catch you up, information-wise.

This is taken directly from a Wikipedia article: A Climax locomotive is a type of geared steam locomotive in which the two steam cylinders are attached to a transmission located under the center of the boiler. This transmits power to driveshafts running to the front and rear trucks. The invention of the Climax locomotive is attributed to Charles D. Scott, who ran a forest railway near Spartansburg, Pennsylvania between 1875 and 1878. A lumberjack of considerable mechanical ingenuity, Scott sought to bring an improved logging locomotive of his own design to market and brought the drawings to the nearby Climax Manufacturing Company in Corry, Pennsylvania. The first four Climax locomotives were built and delivered in 1888. The design patent was filed in February in the same year and granted in December. The invention was not patented in the name of Scott, as he had only a limited education, so he left the drawings to his brother-in-law George D. Gilbert, who was a civil engineer by profession and worked for Climax. Gilbert had the invention patented in his name without mentioning Scott. Many loggers considered the Climax superior to the Shay in hauling capability and stability, particularly in a smaller locomotive. This was due to its fully sprung truck arrangement; the Shay locomotive had no springs on the bogie on the drivetrain side and was therefore not fully able to compensate for twists in the track. The ride on the large class C Climax was characteristically rough for the crew, since the imbalance of the large drivetrain could only be compensated at one speed. Two Climax locomotives are preserved in Canada, both at the BC Forest Discovery Centre in Duncan, British Columbia. Shawnigan Lake Lumber Co. No. 2 is a 25-ton Class B locomotive, and was built in 1910 as shop number 1057. Hillcrest Lumber Co. No. 9 was built to a larger, 50-ton Class B design in 1915, and is Climax shop number 1359.

This post also continues the displaying of some of the post cards in my collection from the Kinsey's Locomotives collection. The picture was taken by Darius Kinsey in 1920.

Logging Locomotive - Another Type (3 of 5)

As we have seen in the past few posts, getting through the steep grades of logging mountain sides was accomplished through many designs of steam locomotives. This engine is called a "Mallet" (pronounced mal-ay);

it was invented by a Swiss (think lots of mountains) engineer Anatole Mallet who lived from 1837 to 1919. A Mallet engine has one boiler that is connected to two sets of driving cylinders; this is also called an articulated engine. What makes this a Mallet engine is that the steam goes through one set of cylinders (rear) at high pressure, the exhaust from those cylinders is at a lower pressure, but strong enough to still be used in the second set of cylinders (front set) before it is sent out the exhaust. The picture on the front of this post card is of a Mallet 2-6-6-2 built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works. It is being used at the Bloedel Donovan Lumber Mills in Sekiu, near Clallam Bay on the westen side of the Olympic Peninsula.

The photo was taken around 1930. The post card continues to show you some of the post cards in my collectioin that are from the Kinsey's Locomotive series. I will continue next week with another, different, design of steam locomotive also used in the logging industry.

Logging Train - NOT a Common Sight (2 of 5)

Last week I posted about a logging train, a common sight in many forests in North America. The logging train was the common sight; the type of locomotive being used on the train was not common. Last week I featured a "Tank Engine". This week I am featuring a gear-driven type of locomotive. The steam locomotive that is most familiar to people has a steam-driven piston on either side of the front of the locomotive. These pistons push a rod that is connected to cranks (bars) that are attached to the driving wheels of the locomotive. Each push and retraction of the piston equals one rotation of the driving wheel. The larger the driving wheel, the faster the locomotive can travel; the smaller the driving wheel, the more powerful is the locomotive. But, there is a limit as to how small the driving wheels can be without having a piston stroke that is just not practical. Logging in mountainous territory requires power to get up the steep hillsides. Moving up the mountain side requires power that would make the piston stroke unreasonable. The solution is to change how the steam’s power is transferred to the driving wheels from cranks to gears. There are three typical designs of geared locomotives: the not-so-common Climax, and the Shay were well known and used.

The Heisler locomotive, as shown on the front of this post card was the third. The following information was taken from the website: https://www.american-rails.com/heisler.html The Heisler steam locomotive was the other popular and well-known geared design built in the late 19th century. However, likely due to the fact that it did not hit the market until the early 1890s, a few years after the Climax and Shay had already begun production (the Shay was first built in 1880), it was not as successful. Despite this the Heisler did sell several hundred units and interestingly, remained in production until nearly the start of World War II (by comparison the Climax ended production in 1928). Additionally, just like its competitors the Heisler was offered in two and three-truck designs, although manufacturers also built them to nearly a dozen different specifications. Today, according to the book, West Virginia Logging Railroads, by William Warden at least eight Heislers are still in operation and more than thirty others are preserved around the world. A few places you can see them running include the Roaring Camp & Big Trees Railroad in Felton, California which has 2-truck #2, built for West Side Lumber; Roots of Motive Power in Willits which maintains Blake Brothers 2-truck #6; and Meadow River Lumber Company 3-truck #6 at the Durbin & Greenbrier Valley Railroad in rural Durbin, West Virginia. End of information from the website!

The post card is, again, part of my collection that includes the photographs of Darius Kinsey from Washington State. This picture was taken in 1922. Kinsey, born in Maryville, Missouri, moved to Snoqualmie, Washington, where he took up photography in 1890. He worked as an itinerant photographer for several years, until meeting Tabitha May Pritts at Nooksack, Washington. The couple married in 1896. The following year, they set up a photo studio in Sedro-Woolley, Washington. In 1906, the couple moved to Seattle. Darius gave up studio work and focused instead on the lumber industry and scenic photography. Tabitha developed the negatives and made the prints, which were sent back to the logging camps and sold to the loggers. Darius used an 11" X 14" Empire State view camera with a custom made tripod that could extend twelve feet high. He used glass plates until 1914, when he switched to film. The major collection of his work is held by the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham, Washington. The University of Washington Libraries also has a collection of his work.

Logging Train - a Common Sight! (1 of 5)

The picture on the front of this post card takes me back to my youth in northern Arizona. For two weeks each year we would live at the family summer cabin in Oak Creek. In my memory, every morning we would drive toward Flagstaff and wait for the logging train to cross the highway with its consist of empty logging cars. Then, again in my memory, each afternoon we would watch as the train brought its treasure to the sawmill just outside town. The locomotive on this post card looks nothing like the one we saw; it is much larger and more powerful.

It is a 2-6-6-2 T locomotive built by Baldwin Locomotive Works. The "T" in the configuration tells me that this steam locomotive is carrying its own water in one or more on-board water tanks instead of in a tender. This locomotive is owned by the Bloedel Donovan Lumber Mills. Julius Harold Bloedel (March 4, 1864 – September 21, 1957) was an American businessman and entrepreneur who operated primarily in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States and Canada. Born in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, Bloedel moved from Wisconsin to Fairhaven, Washington (later Bellingham) in 1890, where he became president of Fairhaven National Bank. He engaged in several frontier business ventures, including the Samish Lake Lumber and Mill Company, Blue Canyon Coal Mines, and, as mentioned, the Fairhaven National Bank. He partnered and worked closely with the Bellingham pioneers. Although many of these operations folded eventually, Bloedel's financial know-how managed to keep him afloat through a series of boom-and-bust economic trials. In August 1898, he founded the Whatcom Logging Company with fellow frontier businessmen John Joseph Donovan and Peter Larson, which would later become known as the Bloedel-Donovan Lumber Mills. During their time on the Olympic Peninsula, Bloedel Donovan operated the Sappho, Hoko, Beaver, and Calawah Camps, logged several thousands of acres of timber, including federal forest timber, constructed over a hundred miles of rail lines, and were known to operate more than 9 sides at once to get the logs for their mills. Today, there is hardly anything left, except for some rails here and there, and other stuff if you know what you're looking for. A park with this name exists today in Bellingham, which sits on the site of Bloedel's first lumber mill, which he dedicated as a park in 1946. The photograph of the locomotive was taken by Darious Kinsey. It is part of a series of post cards that are in my collection called, "Kinsey's Locomotives". Darius Kinsey (1869–1945) was a photographer active in western Washington State from 1890 to 1940. He is best known for his large-format images of loggers and phases of the region's lumber industry. He also photographed locomotives and landscapes and (especially early in his career) did studio work. Kinsey, born in Maryville, Missouri, moved to Snoqualmie, Washington, where he took up photography in 1890. He worked as an itinerant photographer for several years, until meeting Tabitha May Pritts at Nooksack, Washington. The couple married in 1896. The following year, they set up a photo studio in Sedro-Woolley, Washington. In 1906, the couple moved to Seattle. Darius gave up studio work and focused instead on the lumber industry and scenic photography. Tabitha developed the negatives and made the prints, which were sent back to the logging camps and sold to the loggers. Darius used an 11" X 14" Empire State view camera with a custom made tripod that could extend twelve feet high. He used glass plates until 1914, when he switched to film. The major collection of his work is held by the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham, Washington. The University of Washington Libraries also has a collection of his work.

The post card was published and distributed by the company, Pomegranate. Wikipedia tells us that Pomegranate Communications is a publishing and printing company formerly based in Petaluma, California, having moved to Portland, Oregon in 2013. The company, founded by Thomas F. Burke, began by publishing works of psychedelic art from San Francisco in 1968 under the name ThoFra Distributors. It distributed posters for concerts at Avalon Ballroom and The Fillmore. Anchored in visual arts, Pomegranate was active in book publishing in the past as well, especially during the 1990s. Adjustments in that sector caused it to reduce involvement accordingly. Currently calendars - long a mainstay - remain a strong part of their catalog, along with coloring books for all ages, nature books and puzzles. In its current form, Pomegranate is best described as a museum publisher, collaborating with institutions such as the National Gallery of Art, the Library of Congress, the British Library, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, the Sierra Club, the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. It is the licensee for artists M. C. Escher, Edward Gorey, Charley Harper, Wolf Kahn, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Gustave Baumann. Pomegranate’s own website tells us this: Our Mission Art is an essential part of the human experience, and sharing knowledge is crucial in strengthening community. Pomegranate publishes images and concepts that enrich the human spirit of creativity and connection. Who We Are Founded in 1968, Pomegranate is an award-winning independent publisher based in Portland, Oregon, where we handle all editing, design, and distribution of our publications. What We Do We publish books, calendars, puzzles, games, and stationery that bring art, culture, and new experiences to people of all ages. Our products focus on art, nature, history, science, and popular culture. Why We Do lt At Pomegranate, one of our core values is to make art accessible to everyone. To achieve this, we partner with museums, artists, and writers to integrate their works into illuminating products that art lovers, travel enthusiasts, and avid learners are excited to share with others.