I recently embarked on a long road trip, heading to Northern California. As a memento of my trip I picked up a few postcards, as I always do when I travel. I purchased a postcard that was produced by Ranger Doug’s Enterprises. The postcard was a reproduction of a 1939 Works Progress Administration (WPA) poster by artist, C. Don Powell. Ranger Doug’s Enterprises reproduces WPA National Park serigraph posters. This company hand-draws every screen from original black and white photographs. From the new screens they recolor each poster using period artwork and palettes.
I also picked up a copy of The Historic Yosemite Postcard Book. This book has perforated pages and each postcard is quite charming. Finding these reproductions inspired me to search for original vintage postcards from this region. I thought that would be an easy task, and I am sure I could find tons of vintage postcards on-line. But that would be too easy. I would rather riffle through a stack of postcards at local antique shops. I journeyed to one of my favorite antique shops, expecting to find scads of postcards from Yosemite and the Redwood National Park. I only found one from this region. The back of vintage postcards can be as interesting as the front. This Redwoods postcard looks like it was mailed in 1949 and was mailed for one cent.
On October 1, 2015, Yosemite Park will commemorate the 125th anniversary of the establishment of Yosemite National Park. President Benjamin Harrison signed the legislation creating the nation’s third National Park. Yellowstone was the first National Park.
While searching through vintage postcards, I came across a great postcard of Grand Central Depot. I was looking for more information about American Studio, the company that produced this card, and discovered an interesting site: http://www.metropostcard.com. If you enjoy vintage postcards, you will have to spend some time on this site. Opening paragraph from the Metropostcard website: “At the beginning of the 20th century a perfect storm arose between the growing forces of technology, economics, and art that created the Golden Age of Post Cards. It marked a major paradigm shift in which postcards moved from solely being a means of correspondence to a collectable item. More cards were produced and collected on a worldwide basis during those early years than at any other point in history. It is these cards in particular that are the most sought after by today’s collector, but the entire spectrum of postcards ranging from the earliest 19th century postal to digital cards is what makes up the field of Deltiology.”
