Paradise?

We are going to continue with the Southern California orange grove/train theme. This post card is from the white border era (approximately 1915to 1930).

The front of the post card is a picture of the final part of a train passing from an arboretum-like setting into an orange grove. The plants are all in bloom and the orange trees are full of fruit. In the background one can see the coastal range with snow on the mountain tops. Yet, there sit two lovely damsels in the flower garden enjoying the daisies. The title on the card says, “In California, the Land of Sunshine, Fruits and Flowers”. It certainly looks a bit like paradise. Even the people on the train are looking at the two lucky women sitting in the grass enjoying the lovely fragrances.

The back tells us that this is published by the Western Publishing and Novelty Company of Los Angeles. Because we are going to be focusing on California for a while, we will see a few cards issued by them. This company had a decent run – from 1932 to the 1970s. This company was a great promoter of the Southern California tourist business. Their cards were mostly pictures of California and they published some tourist material. There is a code on the top middle of the back of the card (A-101318) but I cannot tell you what it means. I would assume that it means that this is the 101,318th design of post cards that this publisher issued. However, I cannot back up that theory. If you know anything, I would love to hear from you. The back doesn’t tell us who printed the card, but I know that the Western Publishing and Novelty Company had a good partnership with Theo. Sohmer until he disappeared from the business scene.

More California Oranges

We are going to continue with the Southern California orange grove/train theme. This post card is from the divided back era (1907 to 1915, more or less).

The front of the post card is a picture of the parlor car of the “Limited” passing through orange groves in Southern California. It looks like a multi-generational family standing on the platform having their family portrait taken. The orange trees are very young, but laden with fruit. The “Limited” referred to on the card could be the Southern Pacific’s (and partners) Golden State Limited. It ran from Chicago past St. Louis and through New Mexico to California. It began its first run on October 2nd of 1902 and made it final “voyage” in 1968. On the other hand, it could refer to the Santa Fe’s “California Limited”. It began service from Chicago to Los Angeles on November 27, 1892. It took two and a half days to make the trip. The last trip of this “Limited” was in 1954. Both “Limited” trains used Pullman coaches and offered the finest service. Eventually, cost cutting measures caught up with both trains as they tried to compete with cars as a viable means of transportation across the country.

On the back of the post card we can see that the person who purchased the card actually rode the “Limited” into California. He or she has written “When travelling on the Limited this is our [view] of the first scenes the tourist gets of Southern California – It is exactly as pictured.” I always wondered how much of the post card scenes were fact and how much was fantasy and the genius art work of the printer. Evidently, on this card what you see is what you get. The publisher of the card is the Western Publishing and Novelty Company of Los Angeles. They existed from 1932 right into the 1970s. Their subject matter was scenes from Southern California to promote the tourism. The printer of the card is Theo. Sohmer, also of Los Angeles. As I look on the internet for post cards from either the printer or the publisher, usually, when I find one, I find the other. They must have been good partners.

On to California

We have been in Utah (on top of the Great Salt Lake, to be specific) for the last few posts. Today, we are moving over to California. I have more post cards of Utah, but I will save those for later. I want to visit California, where I lived for 21 years in 4 different locations in both northern and southern parts of the state.

This card seems to be part of an advertising campaign by the Southern California Tourist Agency. It probably isn’t, but it certainly highlights the attitude that people had about Southern California. The description of the scene on the top of the card says, “The Golden State Limited, Passing through Orange Groves, Southern Calif.”. I love that fact that they are combining Southern California with orange groves. I have actually seen train tracks through the orange groves. We moved to Southern California in 1959 and for a family outing would drive randomly through the state near our home. Sometimes we would wind up in an orange grove area and, sure enough, there would be train tracks in the middle of them. I love that this picture also has orange blossoms on the trees! This card is from the Linen Card Era (1930 – 1945). One can certainly tell, though, by feeling it that it was not produced by Curt Otto Teich. It is much smoother to the touch on the front.

The back of the post card makes it clear that this was not by Curt Teich. It is published by the M. Kashower Company of Los Angeles. It even says so twice! The first and clearest statement is on the left of the card, “Pub. By M. Kashower co., Los Angeles, Calif.” The second indicator is their logo. It is at the top, middle of the card between the words POST and CARD. It is hard to tell, but I think it is a bear (the California state symbol) between the two letters M and K. This is in a circle with a sprig of leaves covering from the bottom to about 1 and 11 o’clock on the circle. Most of their cards were scenes from Southern California. The M. Kashower Co. was headquartered in Los Angeles from 1914 to 1934. That means that they ended their business shortly after this post card was printed.

Midlake Station

One Year After the Trestle was completed this post card was sent through the mail. It is one of the oldest in my collection. It is from the era when you could not write anything on the back of the card except the address. That rule ended on March 1, 1907. So, this post card is well over 100 years old. I know nothing about the printer or the publisher. There are no company names or logos on the card. The card stock is hardy and slightly textured.

The picture on front is an actual photograph that has been beautifully colored. Doing some sleuthing over time (looking at the print style on the title) I might discover something about either the printer or the publisher, but I am not holding my breath. The picture is of Midlake Station. When the Southern Pacific was building the trestle across the Great Salt Lake, they built small living stations on the trestle for the men working for the railroad. As the trestle was completed they took all of them up except this one. It became a little town appropriately named Midlake. The card was mailed on December 3, 1905. This is one year and a half after the trestle was opened to train traffic. The message is not on the back of the card. It is scribbled around the front of the card where the printer left some white space. It is being sent to a Mrs. Nielsen and the message is in a foreign language, probably Danish or a Scandinavian language.

Coming Back to Life (sort of)

Some interesting things have come together in this post card. First, and best, it is a post card of the Lucin Cut-off. I have about 50 cards of the trestle and this is one of them; you have seen a few more in my earlier posts. I like this one because it looks so textured, even though it isn’t. The printer has added smudges of very light brown (okay beige) in the clouds and on the Great Salt Lake. They give the impression that it is a textured print because the pixels in the brown smudge are so far apart from each other. The train is headed east (shadow location) and one can clearly see that there are 6 people on the platform of the final coach. The steam is coming out of the engine way in front and the air seems to be coming out of the brake hose (invented in 1869) in the back. The wording at the bottom of the card states that this is the “Lucin Cut-Off, Great Salt Lake, Utah (On Southern Pacific)”.

On the back of the card we see that it was printed in Great Britain but published in the USA by the Pacific Novelty Company (PNC) of San Francisco. The PNC was one of three companies that were owned in whole or in part by Edward H. Mitchell (April 27, 1867 to October 24, 1932). Most of his postcards depicted scenes of the western United States. He was very creative and imaginative when it came to deciding what pictures would be on the front of his post cards. He produced an extremely high volume of cards, which had great color for the era in which they were printed. Besides his own company he was also invested in the Pacific Novelty Co. and the Souvenir Publishing Co. He travelled all over the west by train finding subjects for his cards, of which railroads and trains were a drop in the bucket. My next series of blogs should be about his exaggerated produce cards. I have many! Also on the back of the card is half of a conversation between Vera and her friend Sylvia. Sylvia used to live in Berkeley, California near Vera. She has recently moved all the way to Oakland, California – a huge move of less than 5 miles. This card was mailed on August 31, 1909. In those days there were gaps between the houses in the cities of Berkeley and Oakland and no freeway. I typed in the Oakland address on the computer and this picture appeared:

I typed in the Berkeley address and this picture appeared:

Vera is asking her old friend, Sylvia, if she has Monday off. If she does, does she want to go to the theater? The card was mailed on Tuesday, August 31st and Vera wants an answer about next Monday (Labor Day which began in 1894). The post card is to go from Berkeley to Oakland and back in less than a week. She is also telling Sylvia that she has a new steady job; it is with the phone company and it is not in the “hello” department and Smithy didn’t get it for her, either. The “French kid” is in Reno, Nevada and the Henry girl moved next door to where Sylvia used to live (the picture above) so why doesn’t Sylvia move back and they will have filled in the block. This post card is almost 103 years old. It has preserved a simple conversation between friends and brought them back to “life” for a short while today. And, I have met them today because Vera chose to use a postcard published by a company from across the bay, to send to her friend in Oakland just up the road.

Just Little Ol' Me

I am rather disappointed about the amount of information that I can attach to this post card. It was published by Frank H. Leid out of Salt Lake City, Utah. It is post card number 1703 in his series of post cards. It is obviously a picture of the Lucin Cut-off trestle.

I have searched for information on Frank H. Leid, but can find extremely little. There is one post card on a website for sale that was also published by his company. It is a picture of a statue monument in Salt Lake City. I have only 3 in my collection that involve Frank. Two were published by him and one is one of his photographs published by H H Tammen Curio Co. His style of publishing is similar to the Detroit Photographic Co. The picture is on the card and the information about the card and the publisher is in red ink at the bottom. We can deduce from the picture that we are looking west from Midlake (the shadows on the decking tell us that). The back of the post card shows that it was probably printed in Germany. There is an eagle with spread wings over a round symbol with what looks like the letters K, E and C in it. Here is a close-up of the entire symbol followed by a very close-up of the circle with the letters. If you know anything about this I would love to hear from you. Just add it to the comment section.

It also has the message to the purchaser, “THIS SIDE IS FOR THE ADDRESS.” So, we know that this card was printed between March 1904 (when the trestle was opened) and March 1, 1907 (when you could write on the back of the cards). We can see that someone had this in an album because the corners are faded.

The reason that I chose this post card is that I think that I now possess a piece of the handrail that is shown so clearly in this picture. There is a company that purchased the trestle from the railroad and it is slowly taking the trestle apart and selling the wood. The long and short of coversations with a representative from the company, is that I sent them 24 scans of post cards of the trestle from my collection and they sent me a plank of wood (1 x 6 x 18 inches) and a spike from the trestle. That size of wood looks like it would have been part of the railing around the trestle as illustrated by this post card.

Union Pacific on the Southern Pacific?

I have written earlier about how the copyright law enforcement was not so enforced in the time of the early post card production, printing and selling. These three cards exemplify that theme. One can easily see the similarity among the three cards. The same train (except for the coloring), at the same location, going in the same direction, as seen from the same vantage point, with the same semaphore in the same position.

In the first post card we can see that the name of the train is the Overland Limited, and it is being operated by the Union Pacific Railroad. This is very interesting because the Lucin Cut-off trestle was built by the Southern Pacific Railroad. Two comments about this follow. First, the moniker “Overland Limited” has its origin in the stagecoach days. A stagecoach service between Virginia City, Nevada and Salt Lake City operated from 1861 to 1869. This service was begun by the Overland Mail Company and was ended after Wells Fargo took over the business. The Union Pacific Railroad was probably honoring the memory of the stagecoach service. Second, the original route of the Union Pacific’s Overland Limited was about 1900 miles, from Omaha, Nebraska to San Francisco. It began in 1869, the same year the stagecoach route was closed. This passenger service lasted with the Union Pacific until AMTRAK took over the long range passenger trains in 1971. In the early years, it would take sometimes over a week to complete the full journey by train. By 1906, the entire trip could be made in fewer than 60 hours (that’s two and a half days). You can see on the first card that the train is described as “The San Francisco Overland Limited” and they tell us that it is “passing over Great Salt Lake Cut Off, Utah.” They don’t mention that the Southern Pacific has partnered with the Union Pacific to allow this to happen. They just say that it is “On Line of Union Pacific”. This card is from the divided back era (1907 – 1915).

It was published by the Barkalow Brothers in Omaha, Nebraska. The Barkalow brothers were Derrick and Sydney. They began their business as news agents for the Union Pacific Railroad in 1865 which also was (and still is) headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska. At the age of 15 Sydney began his own book and stationery company with his brother. They became exclusive distributors of print material for the Union Pacific all along the UP routes. For retirement, they moved to Fort Myers, Florida. The middle post card actually names the cut-of as the “Lucin Cut-off”. It also tells us that there are 12 miles of trestle on which the trains travel to traverse the lake. The list of similarities in the pictures convinces me that they come from one photo. I went through the list in the first paragraph. There are some differences, too. The mountain that is in the horizon on the first card is missing in the second. The arms of the semaphore are painted differently. But, not much more varies between the two cards. This card was published by the Moon Book and Stationery Company. It is publication number 128 and it, too, comes from the divided back era. I do not know anything about the Moon Book and Stationery Company. I have looked, but in vain. If you know anything or find any information, I will be grateful if you send it my way. You can leave a comment in the comment section or e-mail me at froggytales@hotmail.com. The bottom post card was once a part of a set. The top edge has perforations that tell us that it was once attached to another post card. It, too, only recognized that the train we see is part of the Union Pacific: “Union Pacific Limited Train Crossing Great Salt Lake, Utah”. It is probably from the divided back era, too. On the back side it says “Union Pacific System Pictorial Post Card” and the symbol of the Union Pacific Railroad’s Overland Route is in the upper left hand corner of the card. The bottom left declares that it is the “direct and shortest route to San Francisco”. These last two cards are postally unused. The first card was mailed on September 16, 1911 at 5:30 p.m. from Omaha, Nebraska. The message on the back is from Charlie to Al in Whiting, Indiana: "I got this far or I should say to Ohaha. Having a fine trip. Best regards to all." Whiting, Indiana is on the shore of Lake Michigan just a stone's throw from the Indiana - Illinois border. So, Charlie probably went to Chicago and boarded the train there. Now he is in Nebraska on his way to hopefully somewhere warm for the winter.