mckinleymontana.com

by Allan Tooley

I came across an interesting find at a small antique show I stopped at while driving through Idaho last week. I like looking for ephemeral antiques –paper items, documents, maps, that sort of thing– and I’m starting to build quite a sub-interest in McKinley-related ephemera. I picked up a little knowledge in the field when I worked for some ephemera collectors about fifteen years ago, and am only now starting to re-discover some of the things I’d forgotten.

This is what’s known as a linen postcard. Linens first came out in the 1930s, when Curt Teich, the largest postcard publisher in the world, was looking for a way to enable more saturated inks to dry quickly enough to preserve brighter colors. Turns out a textured paper did the trick. Then followed two decades of vibrantly, almost decadently colored postcards of nearly every imaginable tourist attraction in the United States. I hadn’t known previously that McKinley had had any issued, but it stands to reason, I suppose. Furthermore, this one was published by the Samuelson Post-Card Company, which I assume is actually an imprint of Samuelson’s Photo, a local shop that dates back to the 1870s. Samuelson’s didn’t necessarily print the postcards; it probably contracted that job out, maybe even to one of the bigger players like Curt Teich.

Now that I know these are out there, I’ll keep my eye open for more.