Is this a portrait of the couple or their hats? Feathers in the band. Fascinator with a wide brim. Stories behind their eyes and more clues in their clothes. The real photo postcard went unsent. Pasted inside an album once, and then lost for 100 years.
A sepia-toned oval portrait photograph from around 1910 showing a couple in formal attire. The woman stands behind the seated man, wearing a wide-brimmed hat decorated with a large bow or fabric flower. She’s dressed in a light-colored blouse with puffy sleeves and a geometric patterned skirt with a button at the waist. The man sits in front wearing a white long-sleeved collared shirt, striped tie, and a small hat with multiple feathers in the brim. Both subjects have neutral expressions typical of formal photography from this era. The real photo postcard shows significant age-related damage, with cracked and yellowed edges, stains, and deterioration around the borders, characteristic of an early 20th-century item previously collected in an album.
The Posted Past marks its one year anniversary with fun, facts, and cats!
A year ago, The Posted Past began with a simple quest—to explore the stories behind my family’s vintage postcard collection. These small windows into the past gave me the chance to be curious and brave as a writer. I wasn’t sure I could research and produce a short essay on a weekly schedule. Fifty-two weeks later, without a single miss, I am happily beyond those worries.
Thank you for joining me on this journey. Together, we’ve traveled from Osaka to Matoon. Looked at buffalos roaming in a Kansas field and donkeys on the English seaside. Iconic views of San Francisco came from its well-known chronicler, and we’ve been on a more recent search for a Mexican photographer who vanished in volcanic ash. Each postcard has taken us to unexpected corners of history—social movements, architectural trends, national parks, and the everyday lives of people who took the time to write, “Wish you were here.”
Today’s postcard reminds me why I love this work. The adorable kittens and lovely roses on the front never go out of style. On the flipside, Maude writes to her mum with a few sweet sentiments and concerns. In between lies a world of personal and cultural histories: the rise of the postcard era, the Victorian language of flowers, the printing techniques that made such colorful cards possible, and the universality of cats. Always, an exchange between people. What we’re really collecting are reminders of tender human connections across time.
What’s new for year two? July will bring a shift in weekly format while I take some vacation time—shorter Wednesday posts spotlighting single cards. After that, I’ll be expanding the eBay store, indulging in the nerdy work of adding captions and citations to old posts, and exploring how these weekly essays might become a book and a workshop series. Like any creative start-up, the first year came with a to-do list of dreams and ideas.
Before I sign off, may I ask: would you ever consider sending a vintage postcard as a gift? The mechanics are easy—choose the perfect card online, add a personal note, and we send it off with love through the post office. But is that something you’d enjoy giving or receiving? Leave me a note in the comments.
Thanks again, and meow for now 🙂 Enjoy the summer!
In February 1943, a photographer enigmatically known only as ‘Navarro’ documented Parícutin’s volcanic destruction of a Michoacán village and church, creating powerful postcards that circulated worldwide at the time and are highly collectible now. Then, Navarro vanished from history.
Parícutin erupted from Dionisio Pulido’s cornfield on February 20, 1943, becoming the first comprehensively documented volcanic birth in human history.
The response was immediate and international. Despite World War II, the Parícutin volcanic plumes commanded global coverage. The geological disruptions of fire and lava inspired scientific awe. Life Magazine dispatched photographers. Newsreels carried footage worldwide. Airlines altered flight paths for passenger viewing. By 1947, Hollywood used the still-active volcano as backdrop for the movie Captain from Castile, employing thousands of locals as extras.
In the extensive archives documenting Parícutin volcano’s nine-year life cycle, one name appears and vanishes: Navarro. His postcard images capture the most significant moment in the volcano’s terrifying story—when lava reached the 400-year-old church of San Juan Parangaricutiro. Despite meticulous record-keeping around this geological event, Navarro himself remains a mystery.
His photographs have more than survived. When story of the events at Parícutin are retold, one always finds a Navarro image. The photographer does appear in one other place: Folder 7 in Box 9 of the William F. Foshag archives.
The Day Lava Reached the Church
Navarro’s postcards document a sequence unfolding over a few crucial days in early 1943. For the year prior, the Purépecha community of San Juan Parangaricutiro had watched lava flows advance on their small village while praying their homes, farms, and colonial church would be spared.
Despite their pleas and processions, the lava flow had accelerated beyond divine intervention. President Lázaro Cárdenas and local priests convinced most residents to evacuate, carrying sacred objects and any moveable materials to the nearby town of Uruapan. One rare slice of film shows men removing clay tiles from a building roof.
When the lava reached the church, Navarro was there to document the destruction. Black lava creeping around the church’s perimeter. Intense heat causing wooden elements to combust. Steady accumulation of cooled volcanic rock against the baroque stone façade, contrasting human craftsmanship with geological force.
Two striking images captures the church’s wooden elements on fire—ornate arched stonework and columns holding the structure up while everything else is consumed. Extending the mystery further, these two images bear exactly the same mark and style of the others, but a different name is entirely obscured. Perhaps it makes sense, Navarro and another photographer would go together. Better than alone.
Foshag and the Official Record
William Frederick Foshag of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum led Parícutin’s scientific research and systematic documentation. A respected mineralogist and curator, Foshag had already spent his career studying volcanic minerals and processes. When Parícutin erupted, he was uniquely positioned to lead the most comprehensive study of a volcano’s complete life cycle.
Foshag arrived within weeks of the initial eruption and remained involved until the volcano’s dormancy in 1952. Working with Mexican geologist Dr. Jenaro González Reyna, he established a research station documenting every phase of development. Their collaboration produced detailed maps, temperature measurements, chemical analyses, and thousands of photographs fundamental to volcanic research today.
Navarro’s church sequence suggests either remarkable intuition, access to local knowledge, or information coming from scientific observers. The Purépecha community, drawing on generations of volcanic experience, provided crucial insights about timing and the landscape. Navarro’s ability to be there for the church’s final moments indicates he was plugged in.
Foshag’s archives reveal an extensive network of colleagues contributing to this documentation. Box 9, Folder 7 bears Navarro’s name alongside numerous other photographers, artists, and local and international contacts. It seems Foshag recognized the value of different perspectives in creating a complete record.
The official scientific documentation benefited from all the independent photography produced at the time. Their paths very likely crossed with many others at work during critical days when the lava and ash threatened San Juan Parangaricutiro.
Kodak in Mexico
The real photo postcard industry supporting photographers like Navarro was sophisticated. Entrepreneurs traveled with complete darkroom setups in automobiles, developing film and producing finished postcards within hours. They sold to tourists, sent copies to newspapers, and maintained distribution networks across Mexico and the United States.
By 1943, Kodak had established a robust business providing both cameras and materials throughout Mexico. Navarro’s postcards bear the EKC (Eastman Kodak Company) indicia and are marked Kodak Mexicana, LTD. Navarro had access to standardized, high-quality photographic paper specifically designed for postcard production. This infrastructure allowed photographers to work with consistent materials as they traveled to remote locations.
This commercial system created a parallel archive to official scientific record, prioritizing dramatic visual impact and human interest. While Foshag documented systematic geological processes, Navarro captured moments resonating with public imagination: the church under siege, displaced communities, civilization meeting unstoppable natural forces.
The quality and consistency in images suggests professional training and equipment. His compositions demonstrate understanding of the landscape and evoke pathos. Combined with his access to Kodak’s professional-grade materials, we may assume Navarro was more than a concerned observer.
History’s Mysteries
Navarro’s fade from historical records reflects broader patterns in how scientific events get remembered. Official histories preserve institutional participants while quietly forgetting the names and stories of independent contributors. This is notable with Parícutin, where local Purépecha knowledge proved crucial to understanding volcanic behavior, yet indigenous voices were largely excluded from formal documentation.
Still, Navarro gives us another chance to go there ourselves for a glimpse of those extraordinary hours. His postcards circulated broadly through the popular means of the era—family correspondence, tourist collections, commercial distributors—and are highly collectible today.
As researchers study Foshag’s extensive archives, Navarro’s name remains a tantalizing fragment—present enough to suggest significance, absent enough to resist interpretation. His postcards survive in collections across North America, carrying their maker’s vision but not his story.
This persistence of mystery tells us something about how we remember extraordinary events. While institutions preserve official records with careful attribution, the broader network of individual contributors often dissolves into anonymity. Navarro represents countless others who showed up when history was being made, pointed cameras at crucial moments, contributed to our understanding of the world, and then vanished back into the crowd.
The photographs of the church’s destruction remain powerful because they capture something beyond ecological process—the moment when human scale met geological time and a community’s sacred center became a monument to forces beyond human control. Navarro was there to see it, and that’s a chance for us to remember the event and to admire him.
This essay was inspired by Elena, Maria, and Sandy – with gratitude.
During the 1918 pandemic, daily postcards were lifelines between farm and hospital for the Moss clan in Missouri. Their words remind us that love weaves a way between two worlds.
A postcard trembles in worried hands. On the front, St Joseph Hospital, Linwood & Prospect Streets in Kansas City, Missouri. Victorian landscaping, tree-shaded boulevards, a large, new hospital. It is a world of progress and prosperity frozen in glossy perfection.
Turn the card over. Faded ink bleeds across cream paper. “Dear Verda Marie, Mama threw up all night and does not feel well this morning… only drank a cup of tea for breakfast.”
Two worlds exist on a single postcard. The front celebrates America’s gleaming cities and grand institutions. The back reveals a family torn apart by pandemic and war, working together and staying in touch every day.
The Spanish flu arrived in Missouri like a thief. It followed railroad lines and river valleys, spreading from military camps across the heartland. By September, Kansas City reported its first cases. By October, the city’s hospitals overflowed with the gravely sick and dying.
Mama Moss checked into University Hospital on Campbell Street, one of several small places on Hospital Hill, where Kansas City built its first medical facility in 1870. Now every building overflowed with sick and strapped families seeking any treatment that promised relief or protection.
The postcards begin their daily journey between Cameron and Kansas City. Fifty miles of prairie separate farm from hospital, family from mother, routine from crisis. September 20th,Verda Marie writes from Cameron:
Dear Mama, and all. How are you feeling? And the rest. Are they going to inject the serum by your blood right away? Papa’s finger is hurting worse today. He gets it hurt a good deal working around the tractor.
The serum treatments represented medicine’s desperate gamble. Doctors extracted blood from recovered patients, believing their antibodies might save others. Transfusion methods were primitive—donor to patient through crude tubes, with minimal understanding of blood compatibility.
The front of her postcard shows Fourth Street looking west in Cameron—tree-lined and peaceful, houses with wraparound porches and manicured lawns. No hint of pandemic. No suggestion of families split between farm work and hospital vigils.
September 26, another postcard from daughter Wilda May in Cameron. Papa keeps working despite his damaged fingers. Farming cannot stop, even during plague, while war production and domestic demands for food are high. Families managed alone while the virus spread through communities like wildfire.
Dear Mama, got Verda Marie’s card yesterday. I am glad you are better. When do you think you will be able to come home? … Papa said his finger felt stiff this morning. He has this piece of ground plowed north of the house and is harrowing it now.
This card displays the Third Street business district looking East. The image suggests normalcy, prosperity, urban activity. The message tells a different story—injury, illness, fragmented family life.
October 14th, from Cameron, Wilda May is writing to check in on Mama, Verda Marie, and little Roberta.
How are you getting along? Can you sit up very much any more? Papa had a man come from K.C. last night to work on the tractor. Sold the cream. Eggs are 35 cents. Had 24 dozen and a few left over.
The dramatic red brick architecture of the M.E. Church is featured on the front. The bell tower, archways, and stained glass, no doubt concealing a community in a moment of great challenge.
November arrives with mixed signals. The Great War ends with armistice celebrations flooding city streets. Victory parades march through Kansas City while Hospital Hill counts mounting dead.
November 22nd, Wilda May is now in Kansas City and Verda Marie is back in Cameron. This is the card with St Joseph Hospital on the front and a report of Mama’s worsening condition on the back. Poignantly, a plea for simple materials.
I wish you would send us a pair of scissors, a little pair. They gave Mama so many hyperdermics (sic). They think that is why she is so sick.
The front shows St. Joseph Hospital—imposing, institutional, representing medical progress. The message reveals the grinding reality inside: nausea, sleepless nights, requests for basic supplies.
December 11, 1918. The last postcard in this series leaves Kansas City at 8:30 PM. Mabel Moss writes with exhaustion and desperate love.
Does Verda Marie still have a fever? Make her be careful. Write to your mother every day. I will write to you each day, too.
She repeats herself. Write every day. Every day, I will write to you.
These postcards have become more than communication. They serve as proof of life, wellness checks, emotional anchors in a world gone mad. Each delivery confirms another day fought forward, another family member still breathing.
The front of the card features a swank soft top automobile on Mill Creek Drive, in the Sunset Hill district of Kansas City, Missouri. Lush foliage suggests it is a wonderful day to take in the fresh air.
Armistice brought celebration but not peace. Fighting continued in distant lands. The temporary ceasefire required renewal every thirty-six days. Victory was fragile, conditional, threatened by forces beyond control.
Also, influenza had no respect for borders. While diplomats negotiated peace terms, the 1918 pandemic waged its own relentless war. Families learned that health status changes cruelly and without warning. People woke well and died by nightfall.
These postcards preserve this tension between public aspiration and private desperation, helping us journey back to history as it happened. The fronts of the postcards celebrate civic pride—hospitals, colleges, tree-lined streets, architectural monuments. Their backs tell different stories. Experimental medical treatments. Daily fears about fever and death. Constant threat of injury from dangerous farm equipment. The grinding reality of families separated by crisis, held together by handwritten words.
This contrast defines the American experience during a period of dual catastrophes. Communities built beautiful institutions while individuals struggled for survival and missed hard earned opportunities. Cities planned grand boulevards while families split between hospital rooms and farm chores. America as it aspired to be, and as it actually existed for the Moss clan.
Just as her mother was getting sick, Verda Marie received a cheery postcard from a classmate with some gossip to share.
Harriet Smith is coming over here to school this year. Thank goodness she isn’t in any of my classes … I wish you were going so I would have someone to chum with…
The postcard front featured Missouri Wesleyan College campus—red brick buildings set among autumn trees. The front speaks to knowledge, tradition, the future of young minds. We can read between the lines on the back. Verda Marie would not be in class that semester, sadly.
Like Lazarus rising from his tomb, the world emerged from pandemic death to discover life transformed. The 1920s roared with celebration and renewal, and time went on. Hospital Hill expanded into Kansas City’s premier medical district. The red brick buildings where Mama received her serum treatments evolved into modern towers serving new generations. A century later, technological and medical innovations advance but essential human needs persist, too: connection, communication, proof that loved ones survive another day.
These particular postcards survived in a family archive. Stories of courage, love, determination tucked away to find a century later. Each card represents a day won against the odds, a family bond that transcended distance and disease.
The Moss family’s story continues in everyone separated by illness, every community battling invisible enemies, every healthcare worker risking their life to save others. The beautiful facades combined with harrowing messages remind us that hope and suffering coexist, flipped back and forth in our hands, repeated in every generation.
Native Hawaiian wisdom, mainland capitalism, an LDS mission, and the birth of Pacific tourism. At the center, a banyan tree that has watched Hawaii transform for 120 years. This 1921 real photo postcard reveals the complexities of cultural exchange, migration, and travel over time.
In the photograph we are looking at today, the Moana Hotel rises like a palace from Waikiki Beach, its elegant wings stretching toward Diamond Head. A wooden pier extends into the Pacific. The building’s Victorian details hint at mainland American grandeur transplanted to the tropics. The “First Lady of Waikiki” opened as the territory’s first luxury resort, transforming a landscape once dotted with taro ponds and royal summer homes into the birthplace of Pacific tourism.
Built by wealthy landowner Walter Chamberlain Peacock and designed by architect Oliver G. Traphagen, the Moana opened on March 11, 1901, with 75 rooms featuring Hawaii’s first electric elevator and the unique amenity of private bathrooms. The first guests were a group of Shriners, who paid $1.50 per night—about $50 today—to experience what was then a very remote luxury destination.
Three years later, Jared Smith, Director of the Department of Agriculture Experiment Station, planted what seemed like a simple landscaping choice in the hotel’s courtyard: a young Indian banyan tree, nearly seven feet tall and about seven years old when planted. In the image, the tree is seventeen years old and already creating the shaded sanctuary that is the hotel’s heart even today.
As we flip the postcard over, another dimension is revealed. On November 29, 1921, a simple message sent to Mabel Moss in Longanoxie, Kansas with the usual greetings. But this isn’t a holiday for Aunt Olive. Her return address, “Route 4 – Box 46,” tells its own story of how communities were connecting between ancient and modern, sacred and commercial.
A Mormon Pioneer’s Island Home
Aunt Olive likely lived in Laie, thirty-five miles north of the Moana Hotel, where the Mormon Church had established its Pacific sanctuary. Her Route 4 address would have been served by one of the Rural Free Delivery routes radiating out from Honolulu—a detail that places her among the settlers who were building new communities beyond the city’s tourist corridor.
The Mormon settlement at Laie represented a unique form of cultural encounter. Beginning in 1865, when Church president Brigham Young received permission from King Kamehameha V to establish an agricultural colony, the Latter-Day Saints purchased 6,000 acres of traditional land—a pie-shaped division that provided for sustainable living. The Mormon community tried to honor Hawaiian land practices, giving each family a loi (water garden) to cultivate kalo (taro), the traditional sustenance crop.
The Hawaii Temple, dedicated in 1919, was the first Mormon temple outside continental North America. Built with crushed local lava and coral, its structure embodied the meeting of mainland pioneer culture and Pacific Island materials. Polynesian Saints from across the Pacific were gathering in Laie to receive temple ordinances, creating a multicultural religious community where Hawaiian, Samoan, Maori, and haole (white) families lived side by side.
The LDS approach to missionary work emphasizes learning local languages and customs—not merely as conversion strategy, but as theological principle. One of the early missionaries mastered Hawaiian so thoroughly that he produced the first non-English translation of the Book of Mormon in 1855. The missionaries married into Hawaiian families, adopted local foods and farming methods, and incorporated Polynesian cultural elements into their worship. Even as they openly sought converts, they also saw themselves as students of Hawaiian wisdom.
Paradise Shared
Captured in our image are at least a few conflicting visions of paradise. The Moana Hotel itself represents economic prosperity through the commodification of tropical beauty. Its guests paid premium rates to experience “the ultimate playground,” complete with hula shows and exotic imagery designed for mainland consumption. By the time of this photo, the hotel’s success had already inspired expansion; wings added in 1918 doubled its capacity.
However, the hotel was built where Hawaiian royalty had once gathered, in a place that embodied the Native Hawaiian principles, very different than Western concepts of land as commodity, beauty as product, and culture as entertainment. Look again at the Banyan tree. Where tourists saw scenery, Native Hawaiians understood kino lau—the gods manifested in every plant, animal, and natural feature. But, Hawaiian language had been banned in schools since 1896, and traditional practices were actively discouraged as territorial authorities promoted “Americanization.”
The Mormon community at Laie offered a third way that, despite its evangelical aims, required genuine cultural engagement. Unlike tourists who consumed Hawaiian imagery, or territorial officials who suppressed Hawaiian practices, Mormon missionaries made learning local ways a theological priority. They understood that successful evangelism required fluency not just in Hawaiian language, but in Hawaiian concepts of kinship, land, and spirituality.
This approach created communities that were simultaneously foreign settlements and island adaptations—places where pioneer traditions mixed with Polynesian extended family structures, where American church hymns were sung in native dialects, and where temple architecture incorporated local materials and building techniques.
Time Travel
The tensions that were at work in 1921 continue today, but so do the possibilities for meaningful cultural exchange. Today’s mālama Hawaii movement invites travelers to participate in coral restoration, native forest planting, and beach cleanups. Visitors can learn about places like Waimea Valley, where ancient cultural sites are preserved alongside environmental restoration. The principle of pono—righteous action—guides travelers to maintain respectful distances from endangered monk seals and sea turtles, to support Native Hawaiian-owned businesses, and to understand that they are guests in a living culture, not a theme park.
The island time we seek now isn’t the vacation fantasy of escape from responsibility, but the deeper rhythm of understanding our place within larger cycles of care and connection. When we travel with curiosity rather than conquest, we discover that the most valuable treasures are the stories and perspectives we gather. Over time, we come to know that every place on Earth is someone’s sacred ground.
In Hawaiian tradition, banyan trees serve as gathering places for spirits, bridges between the physical and spiritual worlds. Perhaps this ancient wisdom explains why the Moana Hotel’s banyan courtyard remains a place of peace amid Waikiki’s transformation—a living reminder that some forms of growth honor rather than diminish what came before.
Mid-century postcards captured the wonder of American road trips in vivid color. This Phoenix to Grand Canyon collection reveals the story of car trips, roadside shops, and the natural landscape of Arizona.
Rural Route Arizona
The Phoenix to Grand Canyon route via Oak Creek Canyon carved through America’s most scenic territory. In the 1940s and 1950s, this remained wild, undeveloped country. Starting in Phoenix, travelers navigated winding two-lane roads through Wickenburg, Yarnell, Prescott, Jerome, Clarkdale, Cottonwood, Flagstaff, and Williams.
Each stop pulsed with its own character. Jerome clung to mountainsides, mining copper. Prescott sprawled as a ranching center and former territorial capital. Wickenburg lured visitors with dude ranch culture. Williams crowned itself “Gateway to the Grand Canyon.” These weren’t pit stops but destinations, each welcoming tourist dollars from America’s growing car culture.
Postcard Economy
These postcards bear the stamp of Curt Teich & Co., a Chicago printing giant that drove America’s postcard industry from the 1930s through 1960s. German immigrant Curt Teich founded the company in 1898 and revolutionized postcard production. His linen postcards introduced soft textures and blazing colors.
Teich built an industrial empire through local connections. Photographers roamed America, documenting main streets and natural wonders. In Chicago, artists hand-colored black and white photographs, enhancing reality to seduce buyers and ultimately define a social aesthetic.
Behind every postcard rack stood a web of relationships, too. Hotel owners, gas station attendants, and gift shop operators ordered cards from Teich’s catalog or commissioned custom designs featuring their establishments. Postcards advertised businesses, provided affordable souvenirs, and satisfied the social duty to send word home.
Long-distance calls cost fortunes. Letter-writing devoured time. Postcards offered quick connection and proof of adventure. They were quick and easy evidence that the sender had escaped ordinary life for landscapes of impossible beauty. For travelers, buying and mailing postcards proved both pretty and practical.
The typical buyer belonged to America’s emerging middle class, newly mobile through car ownership and paid vacations. Families drove from California to see the Grand Canyon. Retirees took first cross-country trips. Young couples honeymooned across the Southwest. Many experienced the American West for the first time. Postcards helped them process and share encounters with the sublime.
Selecting, writing, and mailing postcards became part of American vacation ritual. Weather beautiful, wish you were here—heartfelt sentiments that bridge extraordinary experience and ordinary communication.
These postcards transcend tourist kitsch. They document a pivotal moment when the West was packaged and sold as leisure destination. Enhanced colors and idealized compositions reflect not just Arizona’s appearance, but how Americans wanted to see it—as endless possibility, natural wonder, and escape from urban routine.
A lone Buffalo Soldier on horseback captures a moment of dignity in African American military history.
Real Photo Postcards (RPPCs) offer tangible connections to history, yet they often emerge from a family photo album or shoebox collection entirely without context. Piecing together their stories requires careful observation and historical research, picking up valuable clues along the way.
Today’s case is an image of a lone Buffalo Soldier on horseback, printed sometime between 1904 and 1918. This postcard captures a moment of dignity in African American military history. The soldier sits tall in the saddle, wearing a formal military dress cap (rather than the campaign hat often associated with frontier service) and a meticulously maintained uniform. The setting—featuring a substantial brick building and cement sidewalk—suggests an established military installation rather than a frontier outpost.
The man is likely from the 9th or 10th Cavalry, and two military posts stand out: Fort Robinson in Nebraska and Fort Myer in Virginia, both important locations in Buffalo Soldier history.
Western Bastion
From 1887 to 1898, Fort Robinson served as Regimental Headquarters for Buffalo Soldier cavalry and infantry units. The 9th Cavalry Regiment made its headquarters there beginning in 1887, serving with distinction and boasting ten Medal of Honor winners from the Indian Wars. The Buffalo Soldiers at Fort Robinson earned a reputation for discipline and effectiveness that would later influence their assignments to more prestigious postings.
The 10th Cavalry Regiment maintained a significant presence at Fort Robinson during the early 1900s. The substantial brick buildings and newly constructed cement sidewalks visible in the photograph align with Fort Robinson’s infrastructure during this period, as the fort underwent significant modernization around this time. The formal dress uniform and cap in the photograph suggest this might have been a commissioned officer or a non-commissioned officer in a ceremonial or garrison role at the fort.
Nation’s Capital
Troop K of the 9th Cavalry served at Fort Myer in Virginia from May 25, 1891, to October 3, 1894, under the command of Major Guy Henry, a Medal of Honor recipient. This prestigious assignment bears a direct link to Fort Robinson. The selection of Troop K for this assignment was a recognition of the outstanding performance at Fort Robinson and other western posts.
The post at Fort Myer was the first time after the Civil War that an African American unit was stationed east of the Mississippi River near a major metropolitan area. The dignified formal pose and military dress cap would be consistent with a soldier stationed at this prestigious posting adjacent to Arlington Cemetery and Washington D.C., where ceremonial duties would have been part of their responsibilities. Both geographic and symbolic, the lauded post demonstrates how the Buffalo Soldiers earned respect through excellence despite pervasive racial prejudice.
While the AZO markings suggest a 1904-1918 printing date for this postcard, it’s possible the photograph itself was taken earlier. Many soldiers had formal portrait photographs taken to commemorate their service, which were later reproduced as postcards. If this soldier served at Fort Myer with Troop K (1891-1894), the image could have been reproduced on AZO stock years later. Alternatively, if the image dates to the 1904-1907 period, it likely shows a 10th Cavalry soldier at Fort Robinson. Without identifying marks or annotations, we can only speculate.
In either case, the photograph reveals a poignant moment during a complex era of American history. The soldier’s strong gaze suggest a person aware of his place in this important legacy. The Buffalo Soldiers’ contributions to American military history invite deeper study, recognition, and remembrance.
Rare panoramic postcards from the Haines Photo Company capture Phoenix on the cusp of the century.
As American cities boomed in the early 1900s, panoramic postcards emerged to document their transformation. The Haines Photo Company of Conneaut, Ohio seized this opportunity, operating from about 1908 to 1917. Photographers crisscrossed the country capturing these distinctive wide-angle views of evolving American cityscapes, like Phoenix, a fledgling desert outpost poised for dramatic growth.
Phoenix in 1900 numbered just 5,554 residents. Though small, it already served as Arizona’s territorial capital with statehood just twelve years away. These panoramic postcards reveal a city establishing the foundation for its explosive future growth.
Washington and First Streets
The first panorama captures Phoenix’s commercial core at Washington and First Streets. Electric streetcar tracks cut through the unpaved road—these trolleys had replaced horse-drawn versions in 1893, modernizing city transit. Desert mountains loom in the distance while palm trees line parts of the street, evidence of successful irrigation in this arid landscape.
A prominent building with a tower dominates the background. Pedestrians stroll the sidewalks alongside horse-drawn carriages, as automobiles remained rare luxuries. Sturdy two and three-story commercial buildings reveal a city with ambitions beyond its frontier origins.
Residences at Center and McKinley
The second view shifts to Phoenix’s growing residential district at Center and McKinley. Here, successful merchants and professionals built impressive homes along wide, unpaved streets. Both palm trees and deciduous trees (some leafless in winter) frame the elegant residences.
These neighborhoods developed as streetcar suburbs, allowing prosperous residents to escape downtown congestion while maintaining business access. Homes display fashionable Colonial Revival and Craftsman styles with generous porches and elaborate details. Unlike cramped eastern cities, Phoenix boasted detached homes on spacious lots—a pattern that would define its future growth.
Washington and Second Avenues
The third panorama returns us to the commercial district. A substantial three-story building with multiple balconies dominates the left side. Was it a hotel or major retailer? Streetcar tracks again slice through the broad dirt roadway. A park or green space appears across the street, providing rare desert shade.
Notice the shadow intruding on the lower left? It’s the silhouette of our photographer with tripod-mounted camera. Was this F.J. Bandholtz, a prominent panoramic photographer who worked with Haines?
Washington and First Avenues
The fourth panorama captures Phoenix’s financial center. A four-story brick building with numerous arched windows dominates the scene. This building houses the Phoenix National Bank with law offices above, very likely belonging to Joseph H. Kibbey, a former Territorial Supreme Court Justice (1889-1893) and Arizona Territorial Governor (1905-1909).
Founded in 1892, the Phoenix National Bank had become Arizona’s largest by 1899, with deposits totaling $692,166. Telegraph and electrical poles with multiple crossbars line the street, demonstrating developing infrastructure. The dirt streets accommodate both pedestrians and horse-drawn vehicles, though automobiles were beginning to appear.
Capitol Grounds
The fifth panorama showcases Arizona’s territorial capitol. This impressive domed structure, completed in 1900 at a cost of $130,000, sits back from the road on a donated 10-acre plot at Washington Street’s western end. Formal gardens with cypress, palms, and ornamental plantings surround the building, irrigation transforming these arid landscapes.
Governor Murphy dedicated the building on February 25, 1901. At the time, the capitol complex embodied Phoenix’s civic ambitions and push toward statehood. Now the main building is home to the Arizona Capitol Museum, connecting present-day Phoenix to its territorial roots.
Phoenix Indian School
The final panorama depicts the Phoenix Indian School campus with its multiple buildings, some with smoking chimneys, surrounded by palm trees. Established in 1891, this federal boarding school implemented the government’s brutal and coercive Native American assimilation policies. Located on 160 acres north of downtown, the campus featured brick and frame buildings for classrooms, dormitories, workshops, and administration.
The school expanded rapidly from 42 students initially to 698 by 1900, representing 23 tribes from across the Southwest. Operating until 1990, the school’s complex history reflects the often painful relationship between the federal government and Native peoples, and Phoenix’s role in executing national policies.
The Haines Photo Company
These remarkable panoramic images came from the Haines Photo Company of Conneaut, Ohio. From 1908 for about a decade, they specialized in wide-angle photography of towns and cities across the United States. The Library of Congress preserves over 400 of their photographs documenting America’s evolving landscapes and cityscapes.
Technological innovations in cameras and film made panoramic photography possible. Companies like Haines used specialized equipment to capture expansive views with exceptional clarity. They printed these as postcards for both tourists and locals proud of their developing communities. The panoramic format perfectly suited sprawling western cities like Phoenix that grew horizontally rather than vertically.
Who actually pressed the shutter remains mysterious. The Library of Congress identifies F.J. Bandholtz (Frederick J. Bandholtz, born circa 1877) as a prominent panoramic photographer working with Haines. The shadow in the third image provides our only glimpse of the person behind the camera—a tantalizingly incomplete clue to their identity.
Fast Growth in Phoenix
The early 1900s transformed Phoenix through several key developments. Roosevelt Dam (completed 1911) secured reliable water and power for the Valley. The Santa Fe, Prescott and Phoenix Railway (1895) connected the city to northern Arizona while streetcars improved local mobility. Institutions like the Carnegie Free Library (1908) and Phoenix Union High School (1895) established cultural foundations. Economic activity diversified beyond the “Five Cs” (copper, cattle, climate, cotton, and citrus) to include banking, retail, and professional services.
Statehood on February 14, 1912 elevated Phoenix’s status as capital. These postcards hint at those century-old aspirations—a frontier town rapidly becoming a modern American city. Phoenix’s population doubled from 5,554 in 1900 to 11,134 by 1910, and surged to 29,053 by 1920, launching a growth trajectory that would eventually make it one of America’s largest cities.
‘Greetings from…’ designs have rippled through visual culture for well over a century, telling the stories of how we see ourselves and our places.
A stone dropped into still water creates concentric circles that radiate outward. This physical phenomenon is a powerful metaphor for how cultural ideas spread through time and across media, especially visual motifs of place. Certain visual vocabularies persist, evolving with technologies while maintaining essential characteristics.
American statehood, regional identity, and natural heritage have rippled through various media over the past century. Iconic ‘large letter’ postcards, commemorative postal stamps, murals and more—all help us trace a fascinating journey of cultural transmission through the broader currents in American history, industrial development, and visual communication.
Gruss Aus… from Germany
“Greetings From…” postcards emerged in 1890s Germany. The early examples of Gruss Aus cards featured the name of a location rendered in bold, three-dimensional letters with miniature scenes of local landmarks contained within. More common postcards of the day feature detailed illustrations of castles and later photographs. This new design cleverly packed maximum visual information into the limited space, creating an instantly recognizable format that would soon spread internationally.
New American Icons
The transmission of this visual language to America came through a German immigrant named Curt Teich, who arrived in the United States in 1895. After establishing his printing company in Chicago in 1898, Teich would transform American visual culture through the mass production of postcards. Following a visit to Germany in 1904, he successfully imported the Gruss Aus style to the American market, adapting it to suit American sensibilities and landscapes.
The true flowering of Teich’s vision came in 1931 with the introduction of his linen-textured postcards. Printed on high-quality paper with a distinctive fabric-like texture, these cards employed vibrant colors and airbrushing techniques that created a hyperreal aesthetic. The technical innovation of the linen card allowed for faster drying times and more saturated colors, resulting in postcards that depicted America in an optimistic, idealized light—a stark contrast to the harsh realities of the Great Depression era in which they first appeared.
Teich’s business savvy was as important as his technical innovations. He employed hundreds of traveling salesmen who photographed businesses and worked with owners to create idealized images for postcards. This approach not only generated business but also shaped how Americans visualized their own landscapes and communities. The Curt Teich Company would eventually produce over 45,000 different linen postcard subjects in just two decades.
The visual language of these postcards—bold lettering, vibrant colors, and idealized scenes—became firmly embedded in American visual culture during the 1930s through 1950s. As automobile ownership increased and the highway system expanded, these postcards played a crucial role in shaping Americans’ understanding of their own geography and national identity. They were both records of places visited and aspirational images of places to be seen.
State Birds and Flowers
Parallel to the development of the large letter postcard, another form of state-based visual identity was taking root—the formal designation of state birds and flowers. Most American states adopted these symbols between the 1920s and 1940s, often through campaigns involving schoolchildren, women’s clubs, and conservation organizations.
These officially designated natural symbols provided another vocabulary for expressing regional identity, one rooted in the natural world rather than the built environment. While large letter postcards typically highlighted human achievements—city skylines, hotels, roadways—state birds and flowers emphasized the distinctive natural heritage of each region. Together, these complementary systems of regional representation provided Americans with a rich visual language for their diverse nation.
In 1978, the Fleetwood company commissioned father-son wildlife artists Arthur and Alan Singer to create 50 original paintings of state birds and flowers. These watercolor paintings caught the attention of U.S. Postal Service officials, who recognized their exceptional quality and decided to feature them on commemorative stamps. Released on April 14, 1982, the 20-cent State Birds and Flowers stamp collection was another big moment in the ripple effect.
Arthur Singer painted the birds while his son Alan rendered the flowers, creating unique artwork for each of the 50 stamps. The collaboration between father and son added another dimension to this cultural transmission—the passing of artistic traditions and approaches from one generation to the next.
The Fleetwood company published a complete album featuring First Day Covers of these stamps. These decorative envelopes included additional information about each state’s natural heritage, creating a beautifully bound volume that was both aesthetically pleasing and informative. The Birds & Flowers of the 50 States album is now a cherished collectible, a visual catalog of national natural heritage in a single, beautifully presented format.
Greetings from the Post Office
Twenty years later, the visual language of the large letter postcard experienced a revival through another stamp collection. On April 4, 2002, the USPS issued the ‘Greetings from America’ stamps, designed by Richard Sheaff and illustrated by Lonnie Busch. These stamps paid direct homage to the large letter postcards of the 1930s and 1940s, recreating their distinctive style for a new generation.
Each of the 50 stamps featured the name of a state in large, three-dimensional letters containing images of iconic landmarks and scenic vistas. The stamps were initially released as 34-cent denominations, but due to a rate change, they were reissued with 37-cent denominations on October 25, 2002. Here is another circular moment—a postal medium paying tribute to a postcard tradition that had itself been a popular means of commemorating places visited.
These stamps connected with older Americans who remembered the original postcards. Younger generations encountering the style for the first time recognized both the nostalgic and contemporary appeal. The vibrant colors and bold, three-dimensional lettering still effectively communicated a sense of place and regional pride, proving again the resilience of this visual vocabulary.
Even Larger Letters
Artists Victor Ving and Lisa Beggs took the large letter postcard to a whole new scale. Starting in 2015, the Greetings Tour has produced dozens of murals that transform the two-dimensional postcard design into monumental public art.
A grand dimensional leap—a design meant to be held in the hand scaled to the size of a building. The murals maintain the core visual elements of the large letter design while incorporating contemporary references and local touchstones. In a delightful twist, these murals have themselves become tourist attractions with visitors posing for social media. The postcard mural is now a backdrop for new images to be shared globally.
The artists also create custom digital designs for corporations, events, and retail spaces, maintaining the vintage aesthetic while adapting it to contemporary contexts. This commercialization represents another ripple in the cultural transmission of the large letter design, as it moves from public art back into the commercial realm that originally produced the linen postcards.
Digital Doppelgangers
As graphic design software became increasingly sophisticated and accessible in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the visual language of large letter postcards found new life in digital recreations. Graphic design tools enable designers to quickly recreate the distinctive three-dimensional lettering and image-filled characters of the classic postcards.
AI Generation
Online design platforms have further opened access to this aesthetic, offering templates that approximate the large letter style without requiring specialized skills. Now small businesses, community organizations, and individuals can incorporate elements of this visual tradition into their communications, expanding the reach of this design vocabulary beyond professional designers.
With a phrase like “create an image of a vintage large letter postcard from Arizona,” most anyone can generate a decent design in seconds. Like the old days of digital clip-art, the initial attempts lack craftsmanship and historical accuracy. Still, they are a new democratization of this visual vocabulary, making it more accessible to professional designers and enthusiasts alike, though perhaps for different reasons.
This latest development completes a fascinating loop—from specialized industrial printing processes that required substantial investment and technical expertise, to digital design tools requiring professional training, to AI generation requiring only the ability to formulate a design concept and the text prompt. With each technological advancement, the barriers to producing these distinctive visual representations have lowered, while the core elements of the design has persisted.
Visual Persistence
From German Gruss Aus postcards to AI-generated images—our journey demonstrates the remarkable resilience of certain visual vocabularies across time, technologies, and cultural contexts. Despite dramatic changes in production methods, from specialized lithographic presses to neural networks, the essential visual grammar of these designs remains recognizable.
This persistence has a woven quality—the ability to render and replicate a sense of place over time. Whether in linen postcards, commemorative stamps, public murals, or digital images, the large letter design and state symbol motifs combine to convey regional identity and pride over time. Their continued relevance suggests that certain visual solutions, once discovered, become an architecture that generations continue to appreciate and adapt for new uses.
We also feel the ripple effect in the broader patterns of American history— immigrants bringing skills and technology to American shores, industrial innovation creating new visual possibilities, the automobile age changing how Americans experienced nature and themselves, and digital technology transforming how we create and share images. Through it all, the distinctive visual language pioneered by Curt Teich and others continues to evolve.
What new ripples lie ahead? Perhaps augmented reality will allow us to step into these designs. Or new materials and technologies will adapt them yet again for uses we don’t yet comprehend. Whatever comes next, we know that cultural transmission does have a distinguishing mark—it ripples outward in both calculable and unexpected ways, influenced by technology, economics, and human inspiration, creating patterns that can be traced across generations.
For Additional Reading
Meikle, Jeffrey L. (2016). Postcard America: Curt Teich and the Imaging of a Nation, 1931-1950. University of Texas Press. Publisher’s page
“The Immigrant Story Behind the Classic ‘Greetings From’ Postcards.” Smithsonian Magazine. (2018). Read online
A wooden cross rises from churned earth, the inscription stark against weathered wood. A familiar image of a striking handmade monument to the son of a president who fell from the sky over France.
This photograph, captured by a U.S. Signal Corps photographer known only by the initials P.E.L., embodies the US vision of the first World War carefully curated by military officials. While this image evokes sacrifice, honor, and patriotism, the ones that follow emphasize air power and the ground fight.
The Signal Corps photographers worked with clear directives. Their images showcased military capacity and impact: a German observation balloon in flames over Verdun, captured enemy aircraft, and troops dug into the battlefield. These photos celebrated American military achievements while maintaining a safe emotional distance from war’s realities. They framed the conflict as a grand, heroic endeavor of machines and strategy, and no bodies.
Soldier photography told different stories.
World War I marked a pivotal shift in war photography. The conflict erupted during the democratization of the camera, when Kodak’s marketing promise—You press the button, we do the rest—had placed photography in ordinary hands. For the first time, soldiers carried their own cameras to the front. They documented their experiences without oversight, censorship, or propaganda objectives.
The images captured by troops and printed later at studios like Renfro & Jensen in Belmont, Arkansas reveal a more intimate perspective—the human cost of conflict. German officers’ quarters reduced to rubble by American artillery. The harsh conditions of a foxhole or a machine gun post.
These images weren’t composed for newspaper spreads or government reports. They were personal souvenirs, visual evidence of experiences too enormous to capture in words alone. They were captured on a new-fangled camera and carried home as silent witness.
Belmont, Arkansas transformed virtually overnight in 1917 from a quiet rural community into a bustling military training center. Soldiers flooded the region, bringing with them not just their uniforms and rifles, but their cameras. The town experienced a true boomtown effect as businesses sprang up to serve the influx of military personnel. Among these enterprises, the Renfro & Jensen photography studio established itself as a crucial link between soldiers’ experiences and their communication home.
Then, as demobilization began in 1918, returning soldiers sought ways to share or quietly remember what they had witnessed. Renfro & Jensen became unwitting archivists. They must have developed and printed thousands of soldier photographs—images far more frank and direct than anything appearing in newspapers or government publications. The studio workers were likely among the first civilians to confront warfare through this new technology. Each day, they processed images showing destruction, military achievements, and occasionally, the graphic aftermath of combat. Their commercial service inadvertently preserved a crucial alternative visual history of the conflict.
Two European-produced photographic postcards further document the war. These images, printed on distinctive European paper stock, emerged from a continent already numbed by years of destruction.
Another sixteen images — the most harrowing in the collection — can’t be shown here. The ethical boundaries of war photography persist today. What images should be shielded from casual viewing, and which realities deserve documentation regardless of their power to disturb?
Major institutional collections house millions of WWI photographs. The National Archives holds the largest repository of World War I material in the United States, with over 110,000 photographs digitized from two primary series: the American Unofficial Collection of World War I Photographs and the Photographs of American Military Activities. The Library of Congress maintains extensive collections, including the American National Red Cross Collection with over 18,000 digitized negatives showing wartime activities.
Beyond these institutional repositories exists a vibrant world of private collectors who often hold the most provocative and unfiltered images. These private collections sometimes reveal perspectives absent from official archives. Photographer Carl De Keyzer discovered approximately 10,000 archival glass plate and celluloid negatives from WWI scattered across Europe, many in private hands. From these, he selected 100 to reproduce in stunning detail, revealing aspects of the conflict previously unseen in such clarity. Some of the most compelling battlefield imagery exists in small personal collections—albums like this one that have been kept by families of veterans, passed down through generations, their contents rarely exhibited publicly.
The grave of Lieutenant Quentin Roosevelt is quite enough for many. It symbolizes loss while sparing us its visceral reality. But the full photographic record of the conflict includes truly heinous realities—corpses tangled in barbed wire, faces distorted by gas, bodies rendered unrecognizable by artillery.
While official photographers were tasked to frame narratives that supported war efforts, some soldier photographers refused to turn a blind eye. They captured what they witnessed, creating very personal views that continues to challenge our understanding of history. Their lenses documented what words alone could never convey—the irredeemable human cost of modern warfare.
The Posted Past 