If this is Thursday it must be postcards, 447

Old horse drawn wagons in the collection of Lambert Florin, Portland, Oregon

Byron Larson of Portland, Oregon is the photographer and the publisher of the deckle edged postcard shared this week.   The card was distributed by Princess Continental and has the number 131360 and a logo in the place where the stamp is to be affixed on the reverse.  Deckle edges were popular from the 1930s to the 1950s with some showing up even into the 1960s.   There is an informational blurb at the lower left corner on the reverse explaining that these horse drawn vehicles were part of the atmosphere of the Old West.  They are part of Lambert William Florin’s collection of items from the early American West.

Beginning at the left side of the card is a successor of the buckboard and is called a spring wagon.  The spring wagon has four wheels and was drawn by draft animals, usually horses.  It had a square box and two to four movable seat boards.  The seat in the photo looks like a luxury model.  It was called a spring wagon because it had a spring-loaded gate and the box body was hung on platform springs, front, rear, or both.  It was used as a delivery van.

The next vehicle is a sulky.  It had two wheels, was a lightweight cart, and had a seat for the driver.  It could be pulled by horses or dogs and was used in harness races.  Another form of the sulky was used as a form of rural transportation. 

The third wagon, blue and white, in the photo is a regulation horse drawn mail wagon first introduced in the 1870s.  These wagons were often embellished with painted eagles, decorative trim and red, white and blue stripes.  Before automobiles these mail wagons were used for local mail deliveries.

The fourth wagon on the card is the familiar covered wagon or Conestoga used by “overlanders” migrating westward.  They could be pulled by horses, mules or oxen.
  

This old Schroder family photo, above, taken about 1914, shows a couple, with the woman holding a baby, riding in a wagon similar to what many people of that era would have used. Not a buckboard or spring board but slightly fancier.  Written in the album margin was "the old hosh [horse] shay," like the poem about the one horse shay; although, this one has two horses.  The seat bench looks like it is made of wicker.  "How do you suppose women in those long dresses got up into the wagon?"  I asked Bob, thinking there might be a stool or folding step.  He suggested that they either had to "claw" their way up or get help from a man.  

The collector, Lambert William Florin, was born in Oregon in 1905.  When he was a teenager he worked at a number of odd jobs, as a cook, a fisherman, a busboy, and also working on a gladiola farm.  In 1923 he moved to San Diego, California where he worked in the florist business for the next 18 years.  Alcoholism caused the collapse of his marriage, loss of his job, and ill health brought a return to Portland, Oregon where he was active in Alcoholics Anonymous for many years.

Florin worked for the U.S. Forest Service as fire lookout.  He was also a substitute firefighter for the Portland Fire Bureau.  He climbed nearly ever peak in the West at least once.  He also worked for several local florists.  He became interested in ghost towns and photography.  He wrote and illustrated 14 Western Ghost Town books in a series.  He was a collector of Early American West memorabilia, minerals and gems.  He also cultivated roses and had a large collection of orchids.  He died in Portland, Oregon in 1993 at the age of 88.

The logo at the upper right corner on the reverse shows a K in a diamond shape with a crown and includes the identifying number. The K in the diamond logo appears on other cards and until this one distributed by Princess Continental that logo had remained a mystery.

For additional information, see:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/107365669/lambert-william-florin
https://www.britannica.com/technology/spring-wagon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covered_wagon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulky
http://www.uvm.edu/landscape/dating/mail_service/mail_wagon.php

If this is Thursday it must be postcards, 266

Mitchell Point Tunnel, Columbia River Highway, Oregon, ca 1920s

The vintage Sawyer Scenic Photo postcard numbered CG 50 above shows the Mitchell Point Tunnel located toward the eastern end of the Historic Columbia River Highway in Oregon.  John Arthur Eliot, an engineer with the Oregon State Highway, was the designer.   To build the tunnel it was necessary to blast through solid rock 95 feet or 29 meters high up on the bluff of Mitchell Point above the Columbia River Gorge.  Five windows were carved out of the stone to offer scenic views of the Gorge and motorists could pause to see steamboats on the Columbia River below or look up at Mount Adams and Mount St. Helens.

When the tunnel opened for traffic in 1915 it was adequate for the small amount of automobiles in use but as the vehicles became larger and wider and truck transport became more common it was no longer able to accommodate them.  To avoid collisions traffic signals were installed at each of the tunnel entrances and it became a one-way road.  By the 1930s the tunnel was considered inadequate for modern traffic.  In the 1950s a new, wider, river-level route was built at the base of Mitchell Point.  The tunnel was abandoned with the windows bricked up, the tunnel filled with rock and the access roads blocked until 1966 when Interstate 84 was being widened and the Mitchell Point Tunnel was destroyed.  Today there is an ongoing Historic Columbia River Highway restoration effort by the Oregon Department of Transportation with plans to re-create the tunnel.

Carlton Sawyer started producing Sawyer Scenic Photos postcards Portland, Oregon beginning in 1911.  In 1918 the brothers, Fred and Ed Mayer bought part of the business and joined him.  By 1926 Harold Graves had also joined the group and was responsible for Sawyer’s souvenir sets of scenic photographs.  These sets were expanded to include greeting cards to be sold in department stores.  Another person who joined the company was Wilhelm Gruber who was originally a piano tuner and organ builder who also became a photographer.  Gruber and Graves worked together using the new color film Kodachrome and in 1939 updated old fashioned stereo postcard images to the View-Master.  View-Master images were designed to be an alternative to postcards and proved to be very popular.  The Sawyer Company has since changed hands several times with the current View-Masters being manufactured by Fisher-Price.

For more information, see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitchell_Point_Tunnel
http://www.pdxhistory.com/html/post_card_history.html

If this is Thursday it must be postcards, 225

Pittock Mansion, Portland, Oregon, ca 1980s

This is a seven-postcard set showing views of the Pittock Mansion in Portland, Oregon.  The last photograph is of the Christmas tree and since it is a week before Christmas it seemed a good time to share this set of cards.  Smith Western, Inc. of Portland published the cards dated from the 1980s.  Some of the cards have the decorative scalloped edging.

Northeast front of the mansion

The mansion is in the French Renaissance château style and was designed by architect Edward T. Foulkes.  It is located in the West Hills area of Portland.  Completed in 1914, originally the 23-room sandstone estate was built on 46 acres as a private residence for Henry Pittock and his wife, Georgiana.  Pittock was the publisher of The Oregonian newspaper.  Now the city’s Bureau of Parks and Recreation owns the mansion and opens it for tours.  The grounds offer panoramic views of Portland.  

South bedroom

There was a scandal in 1911 when it was discovered and brought to public attention that Pittock had arranged for a water line to be brought to the mansion at city expense even though it was a half mile outside the city limits at that time.  A long standing feud between Pittock and Will H Daly, the city councilman who brought the issue to public attention, developed that resulted in the end of the councilman’s political career.

Failing room

Georgiana, who died in 1918, was one of the founders of the Portland Rose Festival.  Henry died a year later in 1919.  The Pittock family remained in the mansion until 1958 when they tried unsuccessfully to sell the house and property.  In 1962 the Columbus Day storm caused extensive damage and the owners considered demolishing the building; however, the community raised funds to help the city purchase the property.  The city recognized the historic value, purchased the estate in 1964 for $225,000 and spent 15 months restoring it.  The mansion opened to the public in 1965 and has been a community landmark ever since.  Approximately 80,000 people visit a year.  The site is also one of the best places for bird watching in Portland.   It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. 
   

 Library

Dressing room

Christmas in the ballroom

For additional information, see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittock_Mansion

If this is Thursday it must be postcards, 201

Wrecked Strathblane by Will A. Barrows, 1901

The 1901 Pacific County Historical Society painting on this vintage postcard above is by Will A. Barrows of Chinook, Washington and shows the wreck of the Strathblane, a British cargo ship that ran aground off the mouth of the Columbia River at low tide during a storm on 3 November 1891 due to a navigational error.   The ship was a Glasgo-Built iron steamer, 235.4 feet long, 1363 tons, and had a 37.4 foot beam.  It left England sailing first for Hawaii and then going on to Portland, Oregon to pick up more cargo.  The construction of the North Head Lighthouse in 1898 was as a direct result of this wreck. 

There are several different accounts of the event but all seem to agree that the weather was extreme.   This area was called the Graveyard of the Pacific because there had been so many wrecks here before the lighthouse was built.  The stranded ship broke apart before rescuers could get to it.  Captain Cuthell and six or seven crewmembers either went down with the ship or at the last minute got into a small life boat that capsized and all drowned or were swept into the roiling sea by wind and waves and perished.   The remaining crew of between 21 and 26 members managed to get into the tender boat and “were rescued, mostly by trained stallions that swam out in the surf to bring in survivors” since rescuers in boats from shore had to turn back due to the terrible storm conditions.  

A 16 year old cabin boy, Charles Angus “Jack” Payne, was one of those who survived.   Jack joined the staff of the Chinook Observer newspaper and wrote colorful reports about pioneer life on the Columbia.  His living quarters were on the second floor above the printing room and made to look like a small ship’s stateroom with a built-in bunk, a porthole window, and a ship’s clock. 

A navigational error was blamed on defective chronometers by Mate Murray who survived the wreck and reported that he and Captain Cuthell had taken measurements coming away with differing numbers.  Both readings turned out to be significantly off track, putting the ship between 20 and 40 miles further out to the west than it actually was. 

The postcard was published by Photo-O’Neil of Long Beach, Washington and has a brief explanatory statement on the reverse.

For additional information, see:

http://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?24599
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn94052989/1891-11-05/ed-1/seq-8/
http://publishing.eomediagroup.com/chinook-observer/
https://books.google.com/books?id=t5ZVZi5f_JsC&pg=PT28&lpg=PT28&dq=crew+of+the+strathblane&source=bl&ots=_Tz5FfjS3b&sig=pl1FvUFuBDRIRDLyahgoGdnCGjs&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Vj9uVffWHszdsAXy_YPQAg&ved=0CDIQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=crew%20of%20the%20strathblane&f=false
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Head_Light

If this is Thursday it must be postcards, 187

Tillamook Bay, Oregon, 1933

Tillamook Bay is located on the Oregon Coast Highway about 75 miles west of Portland, Oregon.  The postcard was published by Wesley Andrews, Inc. of Portland, Oregon and was sent to Petra Lee in 1933 by her friend Hilda who was taking a trip. Note the "W A" logo in the center on the reverse of the card.  Bell Studio is credited with the photograph that shows a sunset view of the bay.  The card looks a little like a linen card but it does not feel like one or have the fabric grain that linen cards do.  It has the number 959 at the upper left and is still a penny postcard as indicated by the one cent Franklin profile stamp.

Charles Wesley Andrews was born in 1875, in Aurora, Ontario, Canada.  He established his first photo/postcard studio in 1904 at Baker, Oregon.  He is best known for his pictures of the Oregon Coast.  In 1905 there was a World’s Fair in Portland honoring the Lewis & Clark Exposition for which over 450 different postcard designs were published.  This was near the height of postcard popularity and Andrews was one of several card publishers in the area.  For a while he also published the Morning Democrat.  In the 1920s he moved his studio from Baker to Portland where he died in 1950.  He had sold the postcard business to Herb Goldsmith sometime before his death. 

Here in the Pacific Northwest Tillamook is best known for Tillamook Cheese, a natural aged cheddar that has routinely won awards from the American Cheese Society.  It is possible to visit the factory and take tours that also allow for some tasting of the various cheeses made there.  The company has produced a video explaining the process and a link is provided below for any who want to check it out.

Tillamook Bay is protected from the open ocean by shoals and a sandbar (Bayocean Peninsula) and is also surrounded by the Coastal Range except where the town of Tillamook is situated at the southeast end near the mouths of four rivers (Kilchis, Wilson, Trask, and Tillamook).  The name in Salish means “Land of Many Waters” probably referring to the rivers that enter the bay. 

It is believed that native people arrived in the area around the year 1400.  When Lewis and Clark arrived in the early 1800s they estimated the native Salish tribes population at about 2,200.  Captain Robert Gray was the first known American to arrive at Tillamook.  He explored the surrounding areas in 1788 at first thinking he had landed at the Columbia River.  Following a hostile encounter with the local population that resulted in the deaths of a crew member and several natives, Gray left after only one week.  About 60 years later in 1848 Elbridge Trask began a settlement here.  His journey overland and the trials of early settlement are chronicled in the historical fiction by Don Berry known as the “Trask novels” series. 

For additional information, see:

http://www.pdxhistory.com/html/post_card_history.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tillamook_County_Creamery_Association
video cheese factor tour:
http://www.tillamook.com/cheese-factory/factory-tour.html

If this is Thursday it must be postcards, 149

Rooftop flight re-enactment

Ford Depot Hack & 1932 WACO UBF Airplane

One of the places we visited on the recent trip to the Columbia Gorge in Oregon was the Western Antique Aeroplane and Automobile Museum in Hood River.  It is a huge hanger filled with restored cars and planes and a few motorcycles as well.  As usual I picked up several postcards including the two shared today. 

The upper card shows a re-enactment of the 1912 Rooftop Flight and was performed by Tom Murphy in an early Curtiss Pusher replica off the roof of the Multnomah hotel in downtown Portland, Oregon.  The original stunt was by Silas Christopherson and took place on the same rooftop.  All the planes, cars, motorcycles and other vehicles in the museum are in working condition and are tested monthly. 

The Curtiss Pusher was an airplane introduced in 1911 that had the engine and propeller behind the pilot’s seat.  It was one of the first planes to be built in any quantity.  It was a biplane (double wings) and had a wheeled tricycle undercarriage.  It was also the first plane that could takeoff and land on the deck of a ship.  It was mostly constructed of wood and used ailerons thus avoiding the wing patent restrictions established by the Wright brothers.

The lower card has both a 1914 Model T Depot Hack and a 1932 WACO UBF airplane.  The planes and cars in the museum are in beautiful restored condition for the most part but there are also examples of what they looked like before restoration so one can get an idea of the amount of time and effort is needed to put them back into mint condition. 

I wondered why the car was called a Depot Hack and found an article about the “Short History of Station Wagons in the USA” on-line (see link below).  The first station wagons were called Depot Hacks because they were used around train depots as taxicabs or hacks.  They were slightly larger than regular cars and had space for passengers and luggage so they were hired to carry people and cargo to and from railroad stations.  In 1910 Ford began selling just the chassis to independent manufacturers who added a wooden wagon body to make the Depot Hack.  The price was $700.  A few years later Ford began making the complete vehicle this way also.  The term station wagon had replaced “depot hack” by 1929.

The beautifully restored 1932 blue WACO UBF airplane was one of those built in Troy Ohio.  The Weaver Aircraft Company of Ohio later to become Waco Aircraft Company built planes between 1919 and 1947.  This same company made large numbers of military gliders for both the RAF and the US Army Air Forces during World War II. 

For additional information see

http://www.waaamuseum.org/
http://www.stationwagon.com/history.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtiss_Model_D
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_Aircraft_Company

If this is Thursday it must be postcards, 142

 Multnomah Falls, Oregon

Here are a couple more postcards from the recent trip to the Columbia Gorge in Oregon.  We stopped at several waterfalls including the impressive Multnomah Falls featured on these cards.


Both cards are Impact photographics postcards designed in the United States and printed in Korea.  The photographers for the lower card are listed as Craig Tuttle, Steve Terrill and Virginia Swartzendruber.  The photographers for the upper card are Adam Jones/Donita Delmont, agent.   

The upper falls drop 542 feet and the lower falls come down 69 feet for a total of 621 feet making Multnomah Falls among the top waterfalls in the United States for distance down.  They are very impressive and the water noise is loud.  There is a trail up to the Benson Footbridge but it was closed due to a rock slide that occurred in January of this year and damaged the bridge walkway.  The bridge was named for Simon Benson who financed the construction in 1914.  Benson donated the land with most of Multnomah Falls and also gave Portland land that included another waterfall, Wahkeena Falls.  The year round source of the water for Multnomah Falls is underground springs from Larch Mountain, Spring runoff from the mountain snow pack and rainfall. 

The Oregon-Washington Railroad and Navigation Company donated the land at the foot of the falls with a stipulation that a lodge be built there.  The lodge was designed by A. E. Doyle and built in 1925 of local stone and today has an information center, restaurant, gift shop and a snack bar.  We did go into the gift shop where I purchased the cards but we did not go into the restaurant located on the upper floor of the lodge that is supposed to have spectacular views of the falls.  There is a viewing area just outside the building that also has wonderful views.  The falls are so long that it was difficult to get a good picture with my small camera but here above is one. The lodge itself has been entered in the National Register of Historic Places. 

There is a Native American story involving the falls called the “Princess Legend.”  The tale tells of a terrible sickness that threatened the Multnomah people.  An old medicine man told the people that the sickness would only leave if a maiden threw herself from a high cliff on the Big River to the rocks below.  When the daughter of the Chief saw that her lover had become ill with the disease she went to the cliff and jumped to her death.  The story continues by saying that today when the breeze blows through the water and a stream separates from the upper falls then the mist takes the form of the maiden in token of the Great Spirit’s acceptance of her sacrifice.

For more information see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multnomah_Falls

If this is Thursday it must be postcards, 83

Crater Lake, Oregon

The photograph on this postcard is by Frank Patterson who specialized in outdoor photos particularly of the Crater Lake area in Oregon.  Patterson was born in Klickitat, Washington in 1883, began his career early in the 1900s and died in California in 1961.  At one time 228 dealers sold his postcards.   This card was sent to the Lees by their friend, Ida, and is dated 18 August 1927.

Crater Lake is a caldera lake and is famous for its deep blue color and clear water.  The lake was formed when the volcano Mount Mazama collapsed about 7,000 years ago.  It is the main feature of the Crater Lake National Park.  The lake gets its water from rain and snowfall, there are no rivers feeding in or emptying out.  Fish were introduced to the lake and several species have since formed permanent populations. 

Crater Lake is 5 by 6 miles (8 by 10 kilometers) across with an average depth of about 1,148 feel (350 meters).  The maximum depth was measured at 1,948 feet (594 meters) making it the deepest lake in the United States and the second deepest in North America.  As noted in the message on the reverse of the card, the rim of the caldera ranges from 7,000 to 8,000 feet in elevation.  The lake water is very pure in terms of the absence of pollutants perhaps because it does not have tributaries or inlets. 

Reverse

The stamp is from the 1922 series that was in use during the 1920s and 1930s.  The designs mostly featured former United States presidents such as this 2-cent version with the profile of George Washington on it. 

Enlarged Washington 2 cent profile stamp

For more information see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postage_stamps_and_postal_history_of_the_United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crater_Lake
http://www.oldoregonphotos.com/photographers/frank-patterson.html

If this is Thursday it must be postcards, 80

 Sheppherd's Dell, Columbia River Highway, Oregon

 Viaduct, Columbia River Highway, Oregon

I am deviating a little this week, as these two cards are absolutely non-standard souvenir cards and couldn’t possibly be mailed due to their size of 2½ inches by 1¾ inch.  The stamp would almost be larger than the little card.   As shown above they are significantly enlarged.  I did think they were interesting, however, and decided to include them in the postcard Thursdays because as souvenir cards they are similar to postcards and the photographs are typical of those found on normal sized postcards.  These pictures are not dated but from the appearance of the automobiles on the top card I would guess they date from the 1920s.

Both pictures are from the historic Columbia River Highway.   The top card shows Shepperds Dell (sometimes written Shepperd’s Dell), a small canyon located in the Columbia River Gorge near Rooster Rock State Park in Oregon.  A creek that includes two fairly substantial waterfalls flows through the dell at this point and posed an engineering challenge during the highway construction phase that resulted in the bridge.  The bridge is usually featured on cards since the topography of the area makes it difficult to photograph the falls.   I did find this picture on Wikipedia that shows part of the creek and one of the waterfalls.

[photo source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepperd%27s_Dell]

The second card shows the Crown Point Viaduct on the same highway and a sternwheeler or paddlewheel steamboat on the river.   Steamboats were the most efficient means of transportation on the river during the late 1800s and into the 1900s.  These were passenger vessels and went up and down the Columbia River and its tributaries, the Snake and Willamette Rivers.  The rivers had reefs, sand bars, strong currents and rapids.  They also wind and twist making navigation a challenge.  An experienced riverboat captain could maneuver the steamboats through these obstacles and could land nearly anywhere thus making it the dominant means of travel along the river in this region.  The tradition continues today as modern travel companies still offer cruises along the rivers. 

The Viaduct is a concrete structure of approximately 600 feet in length located near the Vista House viewpoint area.  The viaduct provides a way to continue the highway around the rock formation at Crown Point that proved to be another serious obstacle during the construction of the Highway in 1914.   The Vista House previously underwent a five-year restoration project that was completed in 2005. 

The Columbia River Highway at almost 100 years of age is undergoing significant repairs and improvements that began in 2012 and will continued into 2013.  Without the improvements weight restrictions would have to be imposed and that could prevent buses, RVs and other large vehicles from using the highway.  “The Columbia River highway is one of only two roads in the United States designated as National Historic Landmark, National Scenic Byway, and a National Historic District.”

For more information and a few more pictures please see:

http://www.wfl.fhwa.dot.gov/projects/or/crownpoint/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepperd%27s_Dell
http://cruises.lovetoknow.com/river-boat-cruise/columbia-river-steam-boat