Wild Postcards

Ramona was an 1884 novel by Helen Hunt Jackson which described the travails endured by our young half-Scottish half-Native American heroine, mostly due to racial discrimination. It was immensely popular, not just for the storyline itself (sort of a Native American Uncle Tom’s Cabin), but for the romantic descriptions of 19th-century California, and the Spanish [...]

While this looks like a photochrome postcard, it is in fact an actual photograph printed on photographic paper. It is definitely an oddity. The drawing is artist signed by Ken Holmes of Pecos, Texas; Ken marked the drawing as ©1941. The other inscription, that of Howard Studio, also of Pecos, may be Ken’s artist studio [...]

“To the South and West lies Draper’s Valley, named for John Draper, who settled here in 1765. He moved hence from Draper’s Meadows (Blacksburg), where his wife was captured by the Indians in the Massacre of 1755. Six years later Draper ransomed her.” Six years? “He served as an officer in the Point Pleasant Indian [...]

This card has it right: A never-ending flat plain, delineated only by Interstate 80. As the back of the card tells us, “Nebraska lives by its extensive sea of grain — principally corn, wheat and rye. More varieties of grass grow in Nebraska than any other state. Beef cattle and hog production are major contributors [...]