If this is Thursday it must be postcards, 350

Longmire Springs Hotel, Rainier National Park, ca 1910

This photo postcard dates from about 1910 when the Longmire Springs Hotel opened as a health resort.  There are no identifying marks to indicate the photographer or the publisher of the card.  It is unused.  The dating is based on the length of the skirts the women in the picture are wearing and the new appearing condition of the hotel. 

As early as 1889 James Longmire built guest cabins and later the rustic two-story hotel shown on the card.  His son, Eclaine, added on to the hotel and also built bathhouses and barns.  The family had a mining claim before the park was established so the park management had little control over how the hotel looked or how it was run.  Arguments about the appearance and operations developed and the park offered to buy the land and buildings in 1902 but the Longmires refused to sell.  It wasn’t until after the death of Eclaine in 1915 and the Longmire Springs Hotel Company Hotel Company took over operations in 1916 that any changes were made.  That same year the park started building the Paradise Inn and also was able to begin buying the Longmire buildings.

Before the era of park lodges like Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone Park, many of the hotels or lodges were wood frame structures like this one that were cheaply built on blocks instead of true foundations.  The result was after a few seasons the roofs would sag, the floors would no longer be level and no amount of new exterior paint could fix the increasing disrepair.  At some point Longmire Springs was called the “ultimate decrepit mountain resort hotel.”   A second, larger hotel was added in 1906 but it burned down in 1926.  The Annex was added to the property in 1916.  The 1916 structure was much better built and survives today as The National Park Inn. 

The nearby mineral hot springs were thought to be beneficial and a curative for a variety of ailments.  Approximately 500 people visited the springs a year.  Water temperatures reached 85 F or 29 C.  Ironically the mineral springs had no proven health benefits and some time later notices warned that the water might cause sickness. 

Today, except for the 1916 National Park Inn building and Eclaine Longmire’s reconstructed cabin, little remains of the once popular resort.  The meadow is returning to its natural pre-resort condition, there are wild flowers, and there are places where the hot spring water still comes out of the ground and runs down the hillside.   

We have hiked in this area a couple of times and found signs posted providing some local history and also warnings about the water.  

The soggy meadow with ill smelling mineral spring water

For additional information, see:

http://www.arroyorain.com/2011/05/14/mt-rainiers-longmire
https://www.nps.gov/articles/the-national-park-inn.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longmire,_Washington
http://www.nplas.org/longmiresprings.html

If this is Thursday it must be postcards, 213

Camp of the Clouds, ca 1911-1915

We have taken several beautiful hikes in the Mount Rainier National Park so when I found this vintage postcard with a photograph by Lloyd Garrison or L.G. Linkletter showing the “Camp of the Clouds” at Rainier it seemed natural to include it here.  Linklettter was a well known local photographer, born in 1879 in Michigan and died 7 September 1937 in Seattle, Washington, who took his photos between 1907 and 1935.  This particular postcard was found among others dating from the 1920s and 1930s; however, tent camps like the one shown were not in use much beyond 1915 when automobiles could drive all the way up to Paradise and better facilities were being added to the park. 

In the late 1800s and early 1900s there were several camps like this one in the Paradise area.  Before the permanent National Park Service presence established in 1911, tent camping was the only overnight accommodation available to the growing number of tourists during of that era.  Mule or horse pack trains provided transportation from Longmire Springs to Paradise until around 1910.  A government road to Paradise was surveyed in 1903 and built between 1904 and 1910 with some improvements added during the years following until 1915.  By 1910 the Government Road went up as far as Narada Falls with the rest of the way to the Camp of the Clouds via horse.
 

Narada Falls, June 2015, approximately 3 miles below Paradise*

 

United States President Howard W. Taft made the first car trip to Paradise Valley in 1911 although mules had to be used to assist his car above Narada Falls.  After 1915 when the road and automobiles were sufficiently improved, day use of Paradise was possible. The new road also allowed for expanded commercial construction and facilities that still exist today.

For more information, see:
http://www.nps.gov/mora/learn/historyculture/upload/Paradise%20Camp%20Report%20for%20Adobe%20Reader.pdf

*  See also the Thursday postcard, #52 from 16 August 2012 and Summer hiking highlighs -- Mt. Rainier, 1 August 2015.

If this is Thursday it must be postcards, 92

 

Mount Rainier and Reflection Lake, Washington

The postcard above is of Mount Rainer and Reflection Lake, Washington also known as Indian Henry’s Hunting Ground.  It is what is referred to as a linen card.  Linen postcards were printed on a special type of paper stock and had bright colors called colorchrome making them an improvement over the earlier cards that were either black and white, sepia toned, or tinted and reproduced in color. 

The linen cards were printed between 1930 and 1944, some even a little later than 1944.  A few publishing companies used numbers and letters to identify their cards and this one does have a letter/number combination in the lower right corner of the border. The prefix, 6A, I think, means that the card was printed or issued in 1936. 

Indian Henry (1820-1895), whose native name was So-To-Lick, was known as a woodsman and guide.  He lived in both his native world and with the new white settlers.  The area shown on the postcard was one of his favorite destinations and later was given the name of Indian Henry’s Hunting Ground in his honor. He is listed as possibly being Klickitat or Yakama but he also lived with the Mashel bands who were a mixture of Nisqually and Klickitat.

The meadow is comprised of flowery glades, trees, and brooks.  It is a favorite with mountain backpackers.  Although he has been somewhat forgotten it is fitting that the place he loved so much is named for him.  His grave can be found at Mashel Prairie near Eatonville, Washington. 

For more information about him, his life and this area of the Mt. Rainier National Park see:

http://www.visitrainier.com/pg/hike/9/Reflection%20Lakes
http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=8948

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Henry%27s_Patrol_Cabin

If this is Thursday it must be postcards, 84

Paradise Ice Caves, Rainier National Park

Reverse

 Mt. Rainier, Washington, ca 1909

At one time there were ice caves at Paradise at Mount Rainier.  The postcard does not do justice to the color of the caves.  I can remember going there one summer around 1966 or 1968 and marveling at the intense blue color of the ice.  We went in late August, the sun was shining and the entrance to the caves was dripping large drops of ice water.  After a fairly long hike to get up there on a warm day the breeze by the caves was wonderfully refreshing and cool.  We did go inside just a short distance and did not stay long since it was very wet and dripping inside.  These caves were also known as the Paradise Glacier Caves and consisted of an extensive series of interconnected ice caves. 

Seal of the Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition, 1909

The postcard has the 1909 Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition seal on the reverse dating it to 1908 or 1909, telling us that people had been visiting the caves even as early as that time.  The caves were only open for a short period of time in the late summer and sometimes not every summer.  The maximum length of the cave system was surveyed at 13.25 kilometers or a little over 8 miles in 1978 making them the longest mapped such caves in the world.   Sadly, by the mid 1980s the caves no longer existed because of glacial recession.  

In 1906 Paradise Glacier was one vast ice sheet.  By the 1930s the glacier had separated into two sections, upper and lower.  If a glacier is moving substantially the movement closes up the cavities that form the caves and therefore the ice caves disappear.  The caves are formed under stagnant, melting sections of the glacier.  By the 1980s the glacier had retreated to the upper half of the valley that had formerly been filled with ice caves.  A glacier cannot survive without accumulation and snow cover that lasts even through the summer months.  Today there is no remaining snow cover that lasts throughout the year on either the upper or lower sections.

1908 Series Stamp, Franklin profile

This is a used card that appears to have been sent by Bessie to herself.  The stamp is from the 1908 series and has a Benjamin Franklin profile.  These stamps were in use between 1908 and 1922. 

For more information, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington-Franklin_Issues
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_Ice_Caves
http://glacierchange.wordpress.com/2010/04/29/paradise-glacier-ice-caves-lost/