I thought the guy on the right looked a little like Horace Kephart, but he died four years before this post card was published in 1935.
Tag Archives: Curt Teich
Tobacco Sale
Tobacco sale. 1940. Big whoop, huh?
Well, as I write this in September of 2019, there are four instances of post cards on ebay that feature this exact picture, but for four different sales…and not one of those cards is this one. Curt Teich in Chicago really got a lot of use out of this photo, which was shot in b&W and colored in at the print shop, as usual.
VA Administration Center
Much old, great tan. This 1950 post card views the VA Center from the south, taken on an extremely tall tripod, or possibly from an airplane, whatever. The Curt Teich date code is just under the words “Place Stamp Here”.
Zimmerman & Torbett News Agency. I don’t find any informational citations on the web about this business. I seem to remember that it was a news stand.
You can get a good view of this area as it is now on Google Earth.
Soldiers’ Home, Johnson City
This was probably printed in the early 1900s – 1907 – 1910 or so. “Commercialchrome” shows it was printed by Curt Teich in Chicago using their 4-color, halftone, lithographic process.
This vendor wrote their booth number and the price in ink. Annoys the hell out of me, but post cards are hard for vendors to control with too many people either altering the price or just slipping them into their pockets. It’s a hard-knock life, no?
Wilbur Dam, Twice
On the back: PLANT OF WATAUGA POWER ON WATAUGA RIVER NEAR JOHNSON CITY WHICH FURNISHES ELECTRICAL CURRENT FOR INDUSTRIAL, COMMERCIAL AND DOMESTIC PURPOSES TO THIS CITY, THE CITY OF BRISTOL AND SEVERAL SMALLER TOWNS.
This is Wilbur Dam. The dam, fully completed and on line in 1912, actually began generating electricity on a test basis to Elizabethton on December 25, 1911, apparently making it the earliest major hydro-electric generating facility in Tennessee. According to Jackie and Dawn Trivette Peters in Images of America – Carter County (page 101), it was named for James Wilbur, a sawmill operator “in the community”. Thanks to Joe Penza, Archivist at the Elizabethton – Carter County Public Library, I found out the whole story and it hinges more on the importance of a railroad name than that of a logging operator. Joe forwarded documents to me that noted the Virginia and Southwestern Railroad Company had established a flag station and side track for the logging operation on Big Laurel Branch. The railroad named it “Wilbur Station”. So, the dam, officially known as “Horseshoe Bend Dam”, took on the name “Wilbur Dam”. When TVA bought the dam in 1945, the name stuck.
Dan Crowe, in his book The Horseshoe People (1976/self-published), quotes an Aunt Cass Carden as saying during the dedication of the dam ceremony, “Youngins, they’re a-burnin’ a hairpin in a bottle.” I think she was referring to a light bulb.
Curt Teich Printing Company of Chicago began producing the (above) C.T. American Art Colored cards in 1915, using an offset printing process. Later, in the early 1930s, using new European inks and linen-effect embossing, they brightened the cards up tremendously. This Asheville Post Card Company card, from the 1970s, shows how the process, along with more careful and artistic photo editing of the original black-and-white photograph, produced a much more pleasing picture. The colors and other details were added at the facility and printed using a five-plate process:
That suspension bridge in front of the dam was for a time the only access to the powerhouse.
Smoky Mountains Trailways Bus
I don’t know squat about pre-WWII buses (or any other buses, for that matter), but I was curious about this Smoky Mountains Trailways bus. By the shape of the windshield, I think it may be a Mack. I welcome a correction on that. The card was printed in the early 40s (Smoky Mountains National Park was dedicated, by FDR, no less, in 1940.
I read a posting that stated the “founder of Trailways” had a lodge up in the mountains. I couldn’t track down who that may have been, but there was no real Trailways. It was Trailways Transportation System, comprising five individual companies, that was set up in 1936.
Darn nice-looking card, though. Asheville Post Card Company, natch. It’s linen finish, but borderless. I thought it might be a Curt Teich, but that inventory number doesn’t match up (I get a lot of that. APCC used other printers).
As I post this, the Smoky Mountains are actually quite smoky from the numerous forest fires we have going on.
Uncle Bob's Pix 