Here’s a little something to cool you off on this hot summer’s Postcard Friendship Friday: “Iceberg Lake, Altitude 11,500 Ft., Trail Ridge Road between Estes Park and Grand Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado.”  It was in fact posted from Estes Park, CO on 3 August 1940; I guess somebody else was trying to cool off, too.  But we’ll never know who.

This is a Curt Teich “C. T. Art-Colortone” linen postcard, number 6A-H288, published in 1936.  Odd that there’s no message, but it does happen from time to time.  I received a postcard myself just last week (Update: correction — two weeks ago — Ed.) with no message; I was very put out about it.

Be sure to check out the other blogs celebrating Postcard Friendship Friday.

For Postcard Friendship Friday, here’s a postcard mailed to a Friend.  Postmarked Santa Monica, California, 13 December 1938, this real photo postcard was dispatched to Mr. Friend P. Williams of Albany, New York.

Let’s talk about our friend Friend; I was able to learn a great deal about him from a variety of sources.  Originally from Olean, New York, Friend graduated from Cornell University in 1899 with a degree in civil engineering.  He spent most (if not all) of his career working as an engineer for the State of New York.

In 1906, he became engaged to a Miss Alma Horton, the daughter of Mr. F. M. Horton of 97 Gates Avenue in Brooklyn.  (I can’t help but wonder how they met; I can’t find any evidence that he spent any significant amount of time anywhere near NYC.)

He worked on the “Barge Canal” Project, which was a series of major improvements to New York’s canal system, which began around 1903 and lasted for decades.  By 1914, he was the division engineer for the project’s Western Division and, from 1919-1921, he served as a Special Deputy State Engineer, still with the project.

Ultimately, his career progressed until, by 1935, he was the Engineer-Secretary of New York’s Division of Water Power and Control.  When he received this card in 1938, I imagine he would have been about 62 years old and close to retirement.  His work certainly explains his residence in Albany, the state capital.

So friend Friend is no mystery.  The message, however, has resisted analysis:

Our writer uses a postcard featuring one of Oregon’s natural wonders to extol the virtues of California. “Californians are very proud of their state (justly so) and have shown us every square inch, or so it seems. We have been from San Diego to Portland, Oregon, and Dororty has done her duty, lecturing and signing books. We love California, but cold old Albany will look pretty good to us. We shall have a lot to tell you!  Just today we visited the Kellogg Arabian Horse Farm, and you know how much I enjoyed that. There were some beautiful horses there — pure white stallions. Our love to you and the girls. T. H.(?) Santiago.”

You would think that a woman with a name like Dororty and who is obviously an author and lecturer would be easy to find; I found a few, but none of them seemed to fit in with this message. Nor was I able to find Mr. Santiago.

Be sure to check out the other blogs celebrating Postcard Friendship Friday.

Egrets. I’ve had a few but, then again, too few to mention. “Thousands of egrets decorate this mangrove island in newly opened Everglades National Park, Florida.”  Everglades National Park was officially dedicated by President Truman on 6 December 1947; various proposals, committees, studies, land deals and political shenanigans in furtherance of (or sometimes in opposition to) this goal had been in the works since as early as 1923.

The postcard itself is postmarked 23 January 1953 at Naples, Florida and, much to my consternation, I was at first unable to translate the message.

Thanks to Al Gore and His Marvelous Internet, however, you’re never out of touch with someone who can easily translate between Czech and English.  It turns out that what Kris once referred to as the “classic American theme” of rubbing your presence in Florida in the face of those dealing with winter is, in fact, a universal one:

“Dear ones: Heartfelt greetings and a reminder of the sun here in hot Florida. Today is January 22 and it’s 90 degrees.  We are doing well and thinking of you in Michigan, where you are freezing. The Belohlaveks.”  This message is even funnier if you read it aloud with an Eastern European accent.

Greta was kind enough to send me a postcard of this incredible image by Chao-Pang Hsu of Photographic Works of Taiwan.  Although the card lacks a description, Greta was kind enough to provide me with some excellent details and insights:

“Located in Hualien County in the eastern part of Taiwan, Ching-shei (or 清水, i.e. pellucid water) Cliff is one of the toppest (sic) views in this country. With the average height of 800m and bording (sic) the Pacific Ocean for about 21 mi. long at almost (a) 90 degree angle, this majestic scenery always amazes people. But driving along the coastal road could be hair-raising! Winding, narrow, and lampless!”  I think that Greta has a future as a travel writer.

“For millions of years this ‘Mighty Chimney’ 225 ft. high, has stood unmoved. The panorama from its top is a memory maker — beautiful mountains, Hickory Nut Gorge, towering cliffs, incomparable Lake Lure, and the Piedmont Plain.” This card from the Asheville Post Card Company is a treasure I almost missed, tucked away in one of the albums that had been owned by Kay Anthony.  Based on the art deco fonts on the back, it was probably made not later than the mid-1930s.

From what I can wheedle out of my online translator, this place is either called the Mihanovićeva Cesma City Garden or the Mihanović-Brunnen City Park. On today’s Google map, it’s just the Park Gradac — City Park.

It’s difficult to discern the exact origin of this card. While Croatian seems to be the predominant language on the card, the front also refers to the city by its Italian name of Ragusa. On the back, the largest notation is Dopisnica (Croatian for “Postal”), but it also says “Post Card” in German and Italian. The copyright notice — Déposé 1909 — is in French.

This card obviously started out as a hand-tinted black-and-white photograph. I was able to find two other versions of this postcard up for auction as of this writing.

Over at eBay Austria, I found a black-and-white version of the card, apparently postally used, year not stated, for €5 (about US $6.35, plus shipping):

Meanwhile, at the Croatian auction site aukcije.hr, I found a more vividly tinted version from 1916 for 40 HRK (40 Croatia Kuna, about US $7.15):

You can see a modern photo of Dubrovnik from a similar vantage point at Panoramio.

This Curt Teich card (number 0B-H2338, produced in 1940) still has gorgeous colors. It came to me from the collection of Kay Anthony.

According to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park website, “World renowned for its diversity of plant and animal life, the beauty of its ancient mountains, and the quality of its remnants of Southern Appalachian mountain culture, this is America’s most visited national park.” Remnants of Southern Appalachian mountain culture? Paddle faster, I hear banjos!

Courtesy of Great-Grandpa Phil, here are two “Hershey Bar Cards.” According to the Hershey – Derry Township Historical Society, “Bar cards were inserted into the 5 cent milk chocolate and almond milk chocolate bars (from 1909 to 1918). These advertisements extolled the virtues and offerings of the chocolate factory, town, park, and school through their national distribution system.”

The cards are approximately 5-3/4″ by 2-1/2″ in dimension; Hershey bars apparently aren’t as big as they used to be. Based on the postcard backs (which are identical), these would seem to be two of the earlier ones. I’m guessing that, since both cards are creased, they probably spent some time in young Phil’s pocket before being added to his collection. I don’t know if it’s my imagination but, near some of the darker smudges on the cards, I could swear I can smell chocolate.

No, the scan isn’t out of focus; the postcard is. If I were manufacturing postcards, I would endeavour to make sure that my photos were a little more crisp.

The postcard reminds us that Okefenokee Swamp Park in Waycross, Georgia has “many forms of wildlife (including) huge alligators in natural haunts.” When I saw the card I was sure that this was Albert from Walt Kelly’s Pogo comics.

This is a “Plastichrome” (number P8768) by Colourpicture Publishers, Inc., Boston 15, Mass. It looks like it could have been printed yesterday.

A poor quality, divided back postcard from the Photogelatine Engraving Co. Ltd. of Ottawa, probably published around 1930 (although I grant you that it has lasted 80 years fairly unscathed). It was in 1930 that the church in this (at the time) privately-owned park was completed.

To the right you can see the statue of “Evangeline,” the subject of the poem by Longfellow. The poem tells a fictionalized tale of the very real expulsion of Acadians from the Canadian Maritime Provinces — Acadia — between 1755 and 1763 by the British. A great many Acadians wound up in Louisiana, and you have doubtless heard their descendants referred to as “Cajuns”.

The Canadian government acquired the park in 1957, and today it is known as the Grand-Pré National Historical Site.

I purchased this card in Nova Scotia in 2002, in a shop not too far from the park.

This is a Curt Teich reproduction (number 38800-N) of what was originally a Curt Teich linen postcard, original production number unknown. Unfortunately, the dates of reproduction cards are not as well documented as the first runs; all I can say for sure is that the card was produced prior to 1952, as the stampbox denotes one-cent postage. The Georgia State Archives has a card from the original run:

Unfortunately, they don’t list the production number and don’t have a scan of the back of the card for me to see the number; with the number, a few minutes of research would reveal the original publication date.

My card (the newer one) has a varnished finish on the front, but I hesitate to call it a photochrome postcard; the paper appears to have almost as much rag content as a typical linen card. It also looks as if, to make the new card, someone took a pair of scissors and cut the white border from an original card; the edges of the picture on mine are uneven.

Fort Frederica (and the accompanying colonial town of Frederica) was built to defend the colony of Georgia from the Spanish raids that took place from 1736 to 1748. Spain still owned Florida at the time, and the lands between Florida and and British South Carolina were known as the “Debatable Lands.” Georgia’s founder, James Oglethorpe, built and commanded the fort. In 1742, Oglethorpe and his men repulsed a Spanish attempt to retake St. Simons Island in what’s known as the Battle of Bloody Marsh, so named because the marsh ran red with the blood of Spanish soldiers. However, the Fort Frederica Association says that many of the British soldiers turned and ran at the sight of the Spanish, and that only seven Spanish soldiers were killed in the “battle.”

Here are some other tidbits from the association:

• Fort Frederica’s soldiers bathed in the early morning before the alligators became active in the river.
• The first lighthouse built on St. Simons Island, in 1810, was constructed from material scavenged from Fort Frederica.
• Frederica’s barracks also served as a jail for prisoners of war and at least one prisoner of conscience: Christian Priber, a missonary who urged southeastern natives to become independant of the British government.
• No one knows who was buried in Frederica’s burying ground, or even how many people were placed there.
• Slavery was originally prohibited in the colony of Georgia. In 1749, Georgia’s Trustees legalized slavery.
• The Georgia Trustees paid the passage fares for more than half of the original colonists, including those who were affluent.
• Though Fort Frederica was obsolete by the American Revolution, her remaining guns were shipped up the coast for use at Fort Morris, near Sunbury, Georgia.
• James Oglethorpe spent more time at Frederica than he did in Savannah.
• The last time it snowed on St. Simons Island, Georgia was in 1989.
• Two of the founders of Methodism, Charles and John Wesley, preached at colonial Frederica. Today Epworth By The Sea, a Methodist center, is located on St. Simons Island.
• Frederica’s first residents came from England, Scotland, Germany, Swizerland, as well as Creek Indians of the Yamacraw tribe.
• During colonial times in Georgia, Frederica’s residents hunted and ate alligator when food was scarce.
• Frederica’s soldiers manned posts along the coast of Georgia including forts at Darien and on Cumberland Island.
• John Houston, one of Georgia’s delegates to the Continental Congress, was a native of Frederica.
• Frederica’s soldiers attacked the Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine, Florida in 1740. The Castillo is also a National Park Service site.

“Located in Southern Utah and is easily accessible by boat from Wahweap Marina. 309 feet high and 278 foot span.”

This card is postmarked August 11, 1970. Shirley, Sinker and Bonzo write: “On our way back home. Left Las Vegas yesterday morning. We stopped to see Grand Canyon. See you in a few day(s).”

Byron Harmon left Tacoma, Washington in 1903 to photograph mountains and, realizing that there were no photography studios in the Canadian Rockies, settled in Banff, Alberta. The surviving collection of photos numbers over 6,000.

On this card, barely visible near the bottom center, is the legend “Lake Louise. 118.”, scratched into the negative by the photographer. An identical real photo postcard with a more visible legend can be seen in Toni McLaughlin’s collection of Harmon RPPCs (look for #118). Toni also has images of a dozen white border postcards of Harmon’s published in the early 1920′s, the first of which is Lake Louise taken from an ever so slightly different angle.

The back of the card reads “Along the Line of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Photographed and Copyrighted by Byron Harmon, Banff, Canada.”