If this is Thursday it must be postcards, 129

Discovery Bay, Washington, ca 1940

Published by the C. P. Johnston Company of Seattle, Washington this postcard from 1940 is labeled as a “C.T. Art Colortone.”  Earlier cards dating from 1900 were sometimes colored in and then reproduced as color postcards.  The newer process used on this card of changing black and white photos to color for postcards was first used by Curt Teich of Chicago, Illinois (the C.T. in Art Colortone) and later adopted by Stanley Piltz who became a prominent West Coast publisher of this type of card.  Postcards like this were often termed “Linen Type” cards due to the high rag content in the paper that produced a linen appearance.  Many scenic postcards from the West Coast of the United States were printed on Linen Type cards from the 1930s to the 1950s. 

 

Reverse

Anna Schroder, also referred to as Lil Anna Hornnes, sent the card to Benny Bensen the mother-in-law of Anna Stean.  Lil Anna had encouraged Anna and her sister, Sadie, to come to America. The three girls were close in age although Lil Anna was actually an aunt to the Stean girls who were the daughters of her oldest sister Ragnhild Mikalsdatter Hornnes and Ola Johnsen Stean (Birkeland).    In her note on the reverse of the card she tells of the death of a friend, Will Rasmussen, and of her own serious illness and hospitalization in April.

One of the more famous local photographers, Asahel Curtis, took the picture titled “Sunset on Discovery Bay, Washington. “  Discovery Bay is a small bay located in Jefferson County on the Olympic Peninsula that enters into the Strait of Juan de Fuca.  Captain George Vancouver named it in 1792 after his ship, Discovery.  The community that later formed there also took that name. 

The bay is fed by Snow Creek together with other small watercourses and is about seven miles in length.  The main industries were logging and the accompanying sawmills.  The mills are no longer in use but redevelopment, increased property values, and new housing is revitalizing the area.  One of the abandoned mills has been a popular tourist attraction and the subject for photographs and paintings.  Storms in 2005-2006 resulted in damage to these historical places and in 2007 some were slated for removal as part of a habitat restoration effort. Several of the small towns in this locality are historically interesting.   The towns include Port Townsend, Cape George, Beckett Point, Adelma Beach, Gardiner, and Diamond Point.

Native people, notably the Klallam, have lived here for hundreds of years.  Most of them were relocated to reservations in the 19th and 20th centuries and only a few remained living on the bay. 

Early European explorers included Manuel Quimper and Gonzalo Lopez de Haro who came in 1790 and George Vancouver who came in 1792.  In 1858 the S. L. Mastick Company of California established Port Discovery Mill today called Mill Point and started logging old growth timber on the steep hillsides above the mill.  The logs were slid down to the sawmill, made into lumber and loaded from the wharf to be sent on ships to other ports. 

The 1860 United States Federal Census did not enumerate the native population but the total of the non-native people was 70 persons with all men between the ages of 20 and 52 years with the exception of one woman.  The woman was the wife of a cook.  The only non-white person counted was an African-American male cook.  Two thirds of the counted population were born in America the foreign born came from England, Ireland, Wales, Canada with one from Sweden.

The stamp on the card is a one-cent commemorative stamp featuring John James Audubon a scientist, naturalist and artist who is most famous for his beautiful drawings and paintings of birds.  The stamp was part of a series labeled “Famous Americans” and was issued in April 1940.  There is a small bird at the lower left of the stamp.

Stamp featuring John James Audubon, 1940

For more information, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_Bay,_Washington
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Piltz