Granite Dells

  

 Just because it's so damn hot.  There's a Granite Dells sign in the background.  The Dells is an area near Prescott, Arizona, and yes, it does snow there.  There was a Granite Dells Resort, so it's possible that's what the sign is for.  I could go for a bit of snow, right about now. 

We'uns At Westlake

The message is visable, but since it's sideways, "We'uns the two next the bank.. Taken at West Lake Park Los Angeles, Cal. Jan. 7.  Many thanks for the present comes in handy.  K. H. Gelleus, Ash Fork, Ariz."  It was mailed from Ash Fork on February 26, 1906 and made it to Miss Jesse Wilson in Caney, Kansas on the 28th of the same month.  I'm not sure the post office could make the same quick delivery today.

So, a few things.  It was actually Westlake Park, named for Dr. Henricus Wallace Westlake, a Canadian doctor who moved to L.A., was a successful physician, bought  and sold real estate, and was the president of a couple of no longer in existence companies.  He donated the land to the city for a park.  Today we would call it a wetland, but at the time it was considered a swamp, and a good place to dump garbage. It's name was changed to MacArthur Park after World War 2.  Yes, the same MacArthur Park of the weird, stoner song of the same name.

 Ash Fork is the self proclaimed flagstone capitol of the world.  I've been there.  It's in northern Arizona along one of the few remaining bits of old route 66, and I-40.  Truthfully, I have no real memory of the place, but I've driven the route.  Caney, Kansas is just a small town in the middle of the prairie.

I wasn't quite sure of the spelling of the Gelleus name, but after trying a few variations, I found it on Ancestry.com.  I wasn't willing to break out the credit card to do a detailed search, but in 1891, there was exactly one Gelleus family  in all of Great Britain.  They lived in London, and it's interesting to speculate that they ended up in northern Arizona, working at a flagstone quarry, or perhaps the Harvey House at the Ash Fork,  Santa Fe Station.

This card really shows how photographs travel.  The original photograph was taken in Los Angeles.  It was made into a postcard and mailed from Ash Fork, Arizona to Caney, Kansas,  I bought it at an antique store in Pasadena, in L.A. County.  How did it get back to California?

Mildred Takes A Trip 5

Well, I did warn people that the album itself was more interesting than the handful of photos.

The top photo is of Coolidge Dam on the Gila River.  Its reservoir, used for down stream irrigation, is on the San Carlos Indian Reservation, so it's no surprise that the dam was built, and is owned by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.  Near as I can tell, the Apaches don't get a lot of benefit from Lake Coolidge.  There are boating and fishing concessions, but farm use seems to be off reservation.   When the dam was dedicated, in 1930, by President Coolidge, the water had yet to back up and fill the reservoir.  As Coolidge made his speech, with nothing but grass were the lake now sits, Will Rogers remarked, "If it were my dam, I'd mow it."

The second photo looks like a return to the Imperial Dunes in California.

I wonder if Mildred, with little more than a single roll of film from her trip, had a reason for the order of photos in her little album, or did she just paste them in as they came out of the envelope from the film lab?

I guess it's not necessary since I posted the album without interruption, but hey, click on Mildred's album to bring up the whole lot.

Mildred Takes A Trip 4

Well, ramblin' Mildred is on the road again.  The top photo is pretty obvious.  It's the Hollywood Bowl.  Over the years, there have been more than a few renovations to the shell, I've been doing some research and I'm thinking that this particular photo is from either 1928 or 29.  Then, it's back to Arizona, note the saguaro cactus.  And, I'm not sure where, but those steps with maybe Mildred to the right, look familiar to me.  I'm not 100% sure, but  I think I've stood at that exact spot.

You guessed it, click on Mildred's album.

Mildred Takes A Trip 3

It doesn't look like Mildred keeps her album in a nice, easy to follow format.  In our first two posts, she bounced around from California, to Arizona, and back to California again.   Her rambling ways continue with this post.  The top photo makes some sense if she was, in fact, going between Arizona and the Pacific fleet at San Diego.  To me, it looks a lot like the Imperial sand dunes, in California, right up against the Mexican border.  The Algodones Dunes, to use the proper name, is a large sandy area that's pretty much on a straight line between Phoenix and San Diego.  When these pictures were taken, I-80 wasn't even a dream in some road planers eye.  There were a couple of recently paved roads (They replaced old fashioned plank roads.) and a Southern Pacific rail line that carried both freight and passengers.  So why am I linking the Pacific coast and Phoenix?  Well, there's no coast in Arizona, and the Pacific is the closest ocean, and that bottom photo, well that location I recognize.  It's Roosevelt Dam (Theodore, not Franklin.) in the mountains north and east of Phoenix on the Salt River.  It was started in 1902 and finished in 1915.  On completion, it was the world's largest masonry dam, and Lake Roosevelt was the largest reservoir.

Click on Mildred's Album for more views.

Mildred Takes A Trip 2

Back on the battleship, and I think I might know which battleship.  Could it be the U.S.S. California?  Click on the ships name in labels, and you can pull up a postcard of the Cali in all her glory.  And if it's not the California, it's clearly a ship of the same design.  As far as the other two photos, one's obviously somewhere along the California coastline.  The San Diego area might be a good bet.  After all, that's where the fleet was, but then again, it sure looks like the mouth of Ballona Creek near modern day Marina del Rey.  I don't ride my bike out to the coast too often, but there's a bike path along the shore, and the shape of the  ridge line in the background looks like it could be it.  Of course, with the way the California coast has been carpeted with building after building, it might be impossible to match an old photo to a modern landscape.  The bottom photo is Arizona, south of Ajo, in what is now Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.  It's the only place in the world they grow.

Click on Mildred's Album in labels to see the whole thing.

More From the Brewers

More from the Brewers of Ohio.  This is the third postcard I've found from this traveling family.  This one is addressed to "F.A. Brewer, 623 N. St. Clair, Painsville, Ohio"  I've managed to confirm that F.A. Brewer is Frank A. Brewer, born in Painsville, Ohio on May 30, 1891.  There were quite a few Brewers born at about the same time.  But who sent this postcard?  The message, "Feeling fine.  Had good milk. Children good, not tired, getting in Chicago.  Will write soon.  C.B."  And added latter, "10 P.M. getting on train in Chicago."  Not exactly florid prose.  C.B. could be Frank's sister Carrie  or perhaps Frank's wife.  Impossible to tell.  The card was postmarked "CHICAGO ILL OCT 9 1928"  If C.B. and the kids were on their way to Painsville, did they beat the postcard?

Click on Brewer in the labels section to bring up the other cards.

The Flying Family and One Really Creepy Doll

When I was growing up in the sixties and seventies, magazines from Life, and Look to Popular Mechanics predicted that one day the United States would be a country where it would be common for people to own small planes, personal helicopters, and one day the flying car, capable of rolling down the highway and bypassing traffic with the quick flip of a switch that would deploy the wings. Well, I'm still waiting for my flying car. The horizontal format photo with all the people standing in front of a plane is dated "1932." The picture with the "GULF" logo is labeled, "David & Arla, Nogales, AZ 1939." Gulf oil was once one of the largest oil companies in the United States before it was bought out by ARCO. The four adults with the child on the wing, "Shirley, Wesley, Nogales, AZ 1939 Alice, Helen, Emory." Possible it's mislabeled, but there was a time when Shirley, was a far more common man's name than a woman's, so if Shirley is one of the men, the sex balance is restored. The little boy has a toy airplane as would be expected with this flying family. Labeled, "Aug 7, 1937. Robert-3 years. Rafer ranch." Please tell me that the baby carriage picture is a very creepy doll. If not, that's one very weird looking kid. Labeled, "May 1935 Nogales, Ariz." Nothing written on the trio of people, the man in the flying helmet and goggles the old lady and the other man, but stamped on the back, "GUARANTEED FOR LIFE THIS IS A GENUINE BORDER Fox Tone PICTURE. MADE BY FOX COMPANY, SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS. COPYRIGHTED 1927 BY CARL P. NEWTON." Nogales is on the U.S./ Mexico border and before the interstate highway was built it would have been one hell of a drive over dirt roads, impassable during the summer monsoon rains. Flying might have been the only real mobility these people knew.

Camp Florence, Arizona

Written on the back of the photo, "Taken at Florence Arizona prisoner of war camp, 1945. Mrs Sam Bluhen & Mrs Charles E. De Saro" During World War 2, there was a prisoner of war camp near the Arizona town of Florence. Florence was named for the Italian city. The camp held Italian and German prisoners of war.