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.

Indiana Harbor Postcard

It's not surprising that photos with a Mexican connection end up in Los Angeles, but Indiana?  It doesn't read on the scan, but there is an embossed studio mark on this postcard.  "ATLAS STUDIO 3517 MAIN ST. INDIANA HARBOR, IND."  Indiana Harbor is a man made harbor and ship's canal on the southern shore of Lake Michigan, near East Chicago Indiana.  My bet is that these three men were members of a ship's crew, traveling through the St. Lawrence Seaway, all the way to Lake Michigan and the Chicago area.  When this photo was taken, Chicago and Gary Indiana were both major industrial centers, receiving raw materials from all over the world, and shipping out finished goods.  What better way to show the folks back home the great adventure of world travel.

Just so you know, mere coincidence yesterdays post from Michigan City and today's from Indiana Harbor, just a few dozen  miles apart.   I've owned this card for a couple of years buying it from a local antique mall.  The Michigan City card came from a lot purchased on eBay, just a few months ago.  Actually, that purchase reminded me that this card had been sitting in my files.

Biking Along The Russian River

Two women, two bikes, but only one camera?  So what's a lady to do?  Why hand off the camera, of course.  But why did each woman pose on the same bike?  I am puzzled.

What's really puzzling is how I knew  these photos were taken along the Russian River in Guerneville,  Sonoma County, California, when theirs nothing written on the prints.  Well, that took some figuring.  I started with the building in the background.  It didn't take too much to figure out that the sign was for the Henry Hess Co., Lumber and Building Material.  I was pretty surprised when a Google search brought up some info.  And not just info, but a photograph of the same building, damaged by a 1937 flood of the Russian River.  The building was located on Ca. Route 116, at the intersection of River Road and Gravenstein Highway North.

Good old Henry was a bit of a local tycoon, owning the lumber yard, some logging interests and a shipping company.  I couldn't find out what kind of shipping, but my guess would be either cartage, or local ferries, or maybe even some coastal steamers.  In any case, he was successful enough that he could build a summer lodge near the Hacienda Bridge, overlooking the Russian River in the 1920s.  At some point Henry lost control of his business.  How, I couldn't determine.  I do know that Giuseppe "Joseph" Bacci got a job there after World War 2.  He stayed with the lumber yard through several ownership changes, and along with two partners, bought it in the 1970s.  All that from Giuseppe's obituary.

Anyway, going by the hair does, I'm guessing sometime in the late thirties through early forties.  If anyone out there knows when the roads were paved, that could narrow things down a bit.