ROYAL GORGE RAILROAD

I'm in a mood for trains, riding the rails, hearing the far off steam engine whistle. This happens every so often and I just have to let it slide because I don't live anywhere near trains. I have to just shut my eyes and imagine it.

The reason this cropped up again is because of my post yesterday at my vernacular photography blog about the Pennsylvania Railroads steam locomotive the S1. I found a photo of it at the 1939 World's Fair within a box at an estate sale.

The train below is not as stunning as the S1, but it has a fine history.

Click on image to see it larger.

In the late 1870s miners descended on the upper Arkansas River valley of Colorado in search of carbonate ores rich in lead and silver. The feverish mining activity in what would become the Leadville district attracted the attention of the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad and the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway, each already having tracks in the Arkansas valley. The Santa Fe was at Pueblo and the D&RGW near Canon City, Colorado, some 35 miles west. Leadville was over 100 miles away. For two railroads to occupy a river valley ordinarily was not a problem, however, west of Canon City the Arkansas River cuts through a high plateau of igneous rocks forming a spectacular steep-walled gorge over a thousand feet deep. At its narrowest point sheer walls on both sides plunge into the river, creating an impassible barrier. Sharing is not an option along this route.

On April 19, 1878, a hastily assembled construction crew from the Santa Fe began grading for a railroad line just west of Canon City in the mouth of the gorge. The D&RGW, whose track ended only ¾ of a mile from Canon City, raced crews to the same area, but they were blocked by the Santa Fe graders in the narrow canyon. By a few hours they had lost the first round in what became a two-year struggle between the two railroads that would be known as the Royal Gorge War.

The D&RG crews tried leapfrogging the Santa Fe grading crews, but were met with court injunctions from the Santa Fe in the contest for the right-of-way. The D&RG built several stone "forts" (such as Fort DeRemer at Texas Creek) upstream in an attempt to block the Santa Fe. Grading crews were harassed by rocks rolled down on them, tools thrown in the river and other acts of sabotage. Both sides hired armed guards for their crews. The railroads went to court, each trying to establish its primacy to the right of way. After a long legal battle that ended in the U.S. Supreme Court, on April 21, 1879, the D&RG was granted the primary right to build through the gorge that in places was wide enough for only one railroad at most. (SOURCE: Wikipedia)

And here is an image of the hanging bridge the train traversed.

Click on image to see it larger.

An interesting part of the Santa Fe construction through the gorge is the hanging bridge at a point where the gorge narrows to 30 feet. Here the railroad had to be suspended over the river along the north side of the gorge as sheer rock walls go right down into the river on both sides. C. Shallor Smith, a Kansas engineer, designed a 175-ft plate girder suspended on one side by "A" frame girders spanning the river and anchored to the rock walls. The bridge cost $11,759 in 1879, a princely sum in those days. Although it has been strengthened over the years, this unique structure has served on a main rail line for over 118 years. (SOURCE: Wikipedia)

Want to ride through the Gorge on a train? You still can. Click here for the Royal Gorge Route Railroad. Looks like it would be a lot of fun.

These post cards were published by the HH Tammen Company and show the same copy on the back of each. Click here to go to a previous post where near the midway point I tell you everything I found out about Harry Heye Tammen and his rather interesting life.

WISH YOU WERE Here

Raise your hand if you send post cards while on vacation. Okay, raise your hand if friends send you post cards. Nah, me either. I think these days it's just as likely that somone will get out a cell phone and take a picture of themself in front of Mt. Rushmore. There are still post cards to buy, but the variety is pretty slim. What I do find are photographs of locations and animals that are far more high end than the old days. Very commercial shots like you'd find at a stock agency. I hope post cards don't die out, but they'll never be popular the way they once were.

So, do you send a humorous card or one showing people having fun at whatever location you're visting?

Click on any of the images below to see them larger.

This final card is from the Petley Studios. I did a post earlier this year called "Got MILK?" that featured a card from Petley and a brief bio. Bob Petley is supposedly the man credited for inventing the jackalope.

Roadside DISTRACTIONS

Continuing on our road trip after a pleasant night's sleep at the Travel Lodge, I'm now in search of roadside distractions, I mean attractions. You know, the foolish things people create hoping to get you to stop and part with some cash. The book I posted about the other day, California Crazy, was about buildings made to attract tourists. However now what I'm talking about are simply things, non-functioning things. Often times they make no sense at all.

Our first stop is at the Blue Mountain Restaurant and Hotel in Harrisburg, Pennyslvania. It's really hard to explain the tackiness of this post card, and I'm not finding anything online about it. Sometimes ephemera just makes you hit your head against a wall to try and get the image out of your mind.

Click on image to see it larger.

Why were there two dead bears standing in a restaurant in Harrisburg, capitol of the state? Why the flag pole? Did State Representatives come here for lunch so the owner thought they'd add a flag? Was the "decorator" color blind or did they actually think the drapes made the room?Most especially why were there women dressed as cheap versions of Playboy bunnies? Did they wait tables like this? What exactly was the theme of this place? Does it make you feel like the meal is going to be especially memorable, but for all the wrong reasons? If anyone has memories of this place I'd love to hear them.

Then we come to Virginia City, Nevada. I've actually seen this Silver Queen in person inside an old western saloon/casino/hotel. You can read on the back of the card all about her. I'm not finding anything else online.

Click on images to see them larger.

Virginia City is well worth a visit. An old silver mining town hanging on the side of a hill. Great main street, great cemetery. But it gets hot. Very hot, so you've been warned.

Virginia City Historic District is a National Historic Landmark encompassing the former mining villages of Virginia City and Gold Hill, both in Storey County, as well as Dayton and Silver City, both to the south in adjacent Lyon County, Nevada, United States. Declared a National Historic Landmark in 1961, it is one of only six in the state of Nevada.

Virginia City was the prototype for future frontier mining boom towns, with its industrialization and urbanization. It owed its success to the 1859 discovery of the Comstock Lode. It is laid out in a grid pattern 1,500 feet below the top of Mount Davidson. Most of the buildings are two to three story brick buildings, with the first floors used for saloons and shops. It was the first silver rush town, and the first to intensely apply large-industrial mining methods.

After a year in existence, the boomtown had 42 saloons, 42 stores, 6 restaurants, 3 hotels, and 868 dwellings to house a town residency of 2,345. At its height in 1863, the town had 15,000 residents. From its creation in 1859 to 1875, there were five widespread fires. The 1875 fire, dubbed the Great Fire of 1875, caused $12,000,000 in damages.

Today, Virginia City is but a shadow of its former glory, however, it still draws over 2 million visitors per year. In 2004 its condition was considered "threatened". One reason is that an inactive mining pit may cause some of the buildings that make up the historic nature of the district to slide into the pit. The cemeteries are constantly vandalised and are in danger of erosion. Continued use of the district for tourism is harming those historical buildings still in use, and neglect of privately-held unused buildings increases the damage to the district. (SOURCE: Wikipedia)

At one point Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens, lived in Virginia City and wrote for a local newspaper. I remember seeing his old desk in one of the buildings along the main street. So Twain is one of the roadside distractions if you visit this town. I think he'd appreciate that.

If you ever want to read his accounts of his time in Virginia City read Roughing It. I'm stunned to find that Amazon offers virtually nothing but Kindle editions of this book. You can also get it for free as a download from Project Guttenberg. I'd recommend checking through used bookstores. One of my very favorite books. Very very funny!

Twain joined his brother, Orion, who in 1861 had been appointed secretary to James W. Nye, the governor of Nevada Territory, and headed west. Twain and his brother traveled for more than two weeks on a stagecoach across the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains, visiting the Mormon community in Salt Lake City along the way. These experiences inspired Roughing It, and provided material for The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. Twain's journey ended in the silver-mining town of Virginia City, Nevada, where he became a miner. Twain failed as a miner and found work at a Virginia City newspaper, the Territorial Enterprise.Here he first used his famous pen name. On February 3, 1863, he signed a humorous travel account "Letter From Carson – re: Joe Goodman; party at Gov. Johnson's; music" with "Mark Twain". (SOURCE: Wikipedia)

And since we're so close to Lake Tahoe why not take a visit to the Ponderosa Ranch. Yes, THE Ponderosa of Bonanza fame.

Okay, the majority of the show was shot in L.A. on a sound stage, but in the late 1960s an "amusement" park was built at Incline Village, Lake Tahoe, California. In the summertime it was fun place to visit. It was all fake, but when the show was still being produced you could enjoy walking through a replica of the Cartwright home and walking down the dusty Main Street. Alas, the park is now gone.

The idea for the theme park came about in 1965. Bill and Joyce Anderson owned a small horse ranch, which happened to be located at about the same area as the Ponderosa on the fictional burning map. According to the Andersons, tourists would regularly show up at their gates, asking where the Ponderosa was. Smelling opportunity, the Andersons contacted NBC and Bonanza creator/ producer David Dortort. They proposed turning their small ranch into a theme park. NBC, Dortort, and the cast saw the tie-in as a bonanza for everyone. All parties being in one accord, the cast agreed to promos being shot at the ranch site and the Virginia City set- including the nearby Silver Dollar Saloon- for financial consideration. The ads greatly stimulated revenue for the park.

The park opened to the public in 1967, complete with a scale replica of the Cartwright ranch house and barn, similar to the ones seen on TV each week. A replica of Virginia City was later added to the property. The original plan was to open the set to tourists, once filming had wrapped. However, shuttling cast and crew up to Incline Village on a weekly basis became cost-prohibitive. Thus, very few episodes of Bonanza were actually shot there. A majority of ranch-specific scenes were shot on a sound stage at Paramount Studios in Hollywood. Outdoor scenes were filmed on location at nearby Big Bear Lake, Red Rock Canyon, Mojave or eastern Kern County, California. However, Michael Landon, Lorne Greene, Dan Blocker and David Canary often made appearances at the ranch in costume to mingle with fans and sign autographs. Blocker died in 1972. NBC canceled the series the following year. Canary, dressed in character as Candy, made his last visit there in 2002 for a PAX-TV special. Mitch Vogel (Jamie Cartwright) appeared at the ranch for the Travel Channel's "TV Road Trip" in 2002, in which he pitched a behind-the-scenes look at the Ponderosa Ranch and Incline Village. Copies of the "Bonanza Map", autographed by three of the Cartwrights (Pernell Roberts, who had played Adam, left before construction began) were handed out as souvenirs at the ranch for decades afterward, along with tin cups bearing their likenesses.

Episodes that were filmed entirely or in part at the ranch, bear a title plate at the end of the credits, indicating such. These episodes are from the 10th season on (1968-73). (SOURCE: Wikipedia)

And yes, I have one of the tin cups and a wall map like the one used in the opening credits.

Well, it's time to head back out onto the road to see what we can find next on our summer trip across the USA.

Back from where TREES ARE BIG AND MEN ARE LITTLE

I've been on vacation and I wish I hadn't come home. Things were better on the road. I return to have my dog become partially paralyzed. Yes, things were better just a few days ago, but....

It was a short vacation, but peaceful. I'm always happiest when a vacation is amongst nature. Not a fan of cities no matter how much culture they offer. I'd still rather be impressed by that which humans cannot make.

Days in the redwoods followed by days at a lake in the Trinity Alps. One day of rain, the rest perfect mixes of fog and sunshine. It wouldn't be the redwoods without some fog. They thrive in the fog, coastal fog. The majority of my life I have been little more than 1/2 hour away from the Pacific Ocean. Ocean, trees, and mountains are a perfect mix for me. And redwoods my favorite.

One of the things you see when traveling through redwood country are eventually photos of people standing next to or on the stumps of the trees. People love to pose next to these giants. I recently took a photo of a man taking a photo of a group of people posing next to a fair sized tree in a nearby park. The group were giddy to be near a tree so large, but I kept thinking "Boy, you ain't seen nothin' if you think this is big." But they were happy and had a photo to take home of themselves next to a redwood that made them look small. The boys in this old postcard were experiencing this same giddy joy. I've had this card for several years. It was not purchased during my vacation.

Click on image to see it larger.

This is the Boy Scout Tree located in the Jedediah Smith State Park. A stunning place. On the back of this card it says "The 'Boy Scout Tree' near Crescent City contains over 147,000 feet of lumber and is 31 feet in diameter at the base." I love when people see lumber when they see these trees. I see natures cathedrals. Others see track homes. 

Which brings me to the photos you also see of people standing on or next to fallen trees or stumps. The most bizarre one I saw on this trip was taken at a great distance from a tree being cut down. The thing was huge, thousands of years old, and the lumberjacks had put in a large notch and were now standing on what would become the stump, in the notch, tree above them. HUGE tree above them. They would have been squashed like ants if that gentle giant had come down. The tree below with the un-squashed fellow is tiny compared to the really large trees unless he was the height of Paul Bunyan. Still, on the back of this vintage postcard it states "Millions of feet of lumber are made from the Redwoods annually." There they go again, seeing dollar signs. It's like someone picking up a rock and thinking it won't have any value until it has been polished. The natural form is not sufficient for its use.

Click on image to see it larger.

If you've never been in a redwood forest where the ground is covered with ferns you might enjoy this interactive panorama by G. Donald Bain which allows you to stand in the middle of the trail to the Boy Scout Tree and turn a full 360 degrees. Make sure to place your cursor over the photo and then spin to your hearts content in the ancient forest.

And to read and see more about the redwoods go to the National Geographic link to their October issue.

LET'S GET SOMETHING TO EAT in Yellowstone

Back to the lodges. All three of these are from Yellowstone. I haven't eaten in any of these. Last lodge I ate at was up in Jackson Hole. And before that was the beautiful old lodge at Crater Lake. Really fine food at both locations. Not like the snack shops where it's hurry hurry, fast fast, people in line behind you in shorts and odd hats. Eating sitting down at a lodge is different. Again, it's a step back in time.

Click on images to see them larger.

The first card was published by J. L. Robbins Co. out of Spokane Washington and is of the dining room at the lodge at the west entrance to the park. Nothing written on the back.

The second card, published by Haynes Picture Shops, Inc. has the following on the back: 

Grand Canyon Hotel Lounge from  Office, Yellowstone Park. This hotel, of which Robert C. Reamer was architect, is a quarter of a mile from the brink of the Grand Canyon. Its Lounge Room is used for concerts, dances, and a place to rest.

And the final card, also published by Haynes Picture Shops:

Canyon Lodge Lobby, Yellowstone Park, one of the largest structure in the entire camp system in the park was completed in 1925.  Canyon Camp is on the south side of the Grand Canyon convenient to Uncle Tom's Trail, the Upper Fall of the Yellowstone and Artist Point.

I wish they sold cards like this at the parks, like the lovely ones of the old posters I posted about two days ago. The cards these day are pretty high gloss shots, but they seem to be missing a little bit of soul. Okay, I admit it, I bought prairie dog cards when I was in Wyoming. I loved the prairie dog villages and would sit amongst them getting them all upset. Cute little buggers. Still, I'd have bought more cards if they'd have had a feeling of history. Most of the cards I bought at Rushmore were old photos that had been reissued. Maybe those of us that like ephemera are just the exception to the sales rules.