Postcards: Drop Me a Line

Now, in the 21st century, many of you record your lives and loves by posting photos on Instagram. But, as the cliché goes, there is nothing new under the sun. Variations, yes, including what could be seen as an early 20th-century version of Instagram, called the “Real Photo Postcard,” or RPPC.

Commercially made picture postcards had become a popular form of communication in the mid to late nineteenth century. The images were sold as souvenirs, as is often the case today. Postcards featuring the Eiffel Tower, built in 1889, were wildly popular, as were postcard images of the Chicago World’s Fair, held in 1893. These early postcards, however, did not have a divided back; there was space for an address but not for a message.

Then came one innovation and several new postal regulations, all leading to what is now called the Golden Age of the picture postcard, about 1903-1920.

The innovation was a new camera made by Kodak in 1903, the No. 3A Folding Pocket Kodak. The camera was designed to use postcard-sized film. Kodak also offered a preprinted card back that allowed postcards to be made from negatives.

Anyone with a No. 3A could take a photograph and have it printed on the back of a postcard. Entrepreneurs at once sensed an opportunity, and photographers soon roamed everywhere, town to town, recording local scenes … parades, fire, floods, homes, and families and, of course, selling the local scenes to the local citizens. Communities like Fallon did not need an Eiffel Tower or a World’s Fair to garner the attention of the roving photographer. The result was an unprecedented photo history of America, particularly of small-town and rural America.

At the same time, postal regulations changed. Rural Free Delivery expanded mail service in places like Churchill County, where dwellings might be far apart. The price for mailing a postcard was lowered from 2 cents to a penny, hence the phrase “penny postcard.” Restrictions that had been placed on postcard design also changed, allowing for a divided back which left room to write a message.

The resulting national “postcard craze” quickly reached Fallon. In my personal collection, I have a real photo postcard of my father, Ernest Maupin, playing with a dog (shown here) and another one of him riding a bicycle, circa 1910. I also have a postcard of the Hotel Fallon (c. 1906) and one showing a crowd gathered, perhaps to watch a parade, by the side of a large two-story brick structure on the corner of Maine and Williams, where the Nugget parking lot is now located. The building is marked “People’s Bro’s.” I’m relatively sure that my grandmother had multiple postcards made from these images to send to her relatives in Missouri and elsewhere, probably the only photos they ever saw of Fallon and their Nevada kinfolk.

People also used real photo postcards to brag about their adventures away from home. Carol Cote (“In Focus, Volume 7”) cited a piece from the “Churchill County Eagle” (August 11, 1906) stating that the paper had received several souvenir postcards sent from Santa Monica, California. They were mailed by [Fallon resident] Manie Sanford and featured a photo of him “standing beside a 300 pound fish… which he says he caught (?)”

Please send your stories and ideas for stories to [email protected].