Picture Postcards: The World’s First Social Media
Also: Picture postcards arrived at the perfect time for Okoboji
Before the internet, before television, before movies as we know them today, and before color photography was widespread, there was only one way for large numbers of people to see a depiction of a place or an event in full color.
The picture postcard.
From its introduction in Europe in 1870 until the 1930s and ‘40s, when color photography and film came into common use, the picture postcard stood alone. For a half-century or so, there was no other medium that could bring a scene from a distant place to masses of people in full color.
The printed, mass-produced picture postcard became a sudden and unplanned sensation in the U.S. in 1893 during the Chicago World’s Fair, aka the World Columbian Exhibition marking the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in the New World.
Ten of the buildings built for the fair were selected for depiction on the postcards. Every card had a color depiction of one of the buildings and was labeled “official souvenir.” They also were inexpensive, pennies each, plus another 2 cents for postage. For many fairgoers, they were something new and irresistible. The huge crowds at the fair were the final factor in creating a new sensation. Many of the cards that were purchased, perhaps most, were mailed to family members and friends.
The fair’s total attendance of 27 million people — an average of 150,000 every day of the fair’s six-month run — translated to picture postcards including short notes from the sender being mailed to people everywhere. With about 13 million households in America at this time, a large percentage of the U.S. population would have received a World’s Fair postcard at their place of residence.
Over a relatively short period, color picture postcards – and their counterparts in black-and-white – became a kind of mass media that had not existed before. The people who received them saved them. The people who made and sold them profited nicely. Retailers, for example, paid just a half-cent each for the cards they sold, and little space was required for display; the profit margin was enormous.
Picture postcards got another huge boost in 1898 when the Post Office reduced the mailing cost from two cents to one cent. Soon virtually everyone who traveled bought and mailed picture postcards. In 1905, the U. S. Post Office handled one billion picture postcards. The pace continued at close to that rate for the next decade.
The phrase social media did not exist yet, but that is what picture postcards were — the world’s first social media platform. They were an early form of entertainment and provided information as well. Millions of people saved the cards they received, put them in an album, and kept them on a table or shelf for display in their parlors or living rooms.
What picture postcards did for Okoboji
One result of the arrival of picture postcards was that the places depicted on the cards often received a boost in popularity. The timing of the explosion in popularity of the cards — the late 1890s and early 1900s — happened to be a perfect fit for the then-searching-for-identity Iowa resort area of Okoboji. Picture postcards were as important in the development of the lakes area as a resort mecca as the arrival of the steamships that moved masses of people around the lakes area in those years – before paved roads existed. (See arnoldgarson@substack.com from November 4.)
The early picture postcards of the Okoboji area focused especially on people fishing, one of the top attractions of the era. But they also showed boating, swimming, and people generally enjoying life. There were postcards with pictures of hotels, train depots, amusement attractions, steamboats, and the lakes; also churches and public buildings.
To make sure the point was made, the depictions of Lakes area attractions sometimes were significantly exaggerated. One postcard from 1908 showed two men in a small rowboat hauling in a catch with a fishing pole. The fish, shown as being about half out of the water, was enormous – quite obviously drawn into the photo and enlarged to a ridiculous size. Based on the size of the out-of-water portion of the fish, its total length would have been about 12 feet – about twice as large as the largest fish ever to occupy the lakes, the paddlefish. The caption on this postcard read: “Fishing is good at Okoboji Lake, Iowa.”
A similar postcard depicted a man standing in the water on the shoreline also holding a fishing pole attached to an impossibly large fish being pulled from the lake. Again, the scene had been created by both a photographer and an artist. The card was mailed from Arnold’s Park to a family member in Marshalltown, Iowa: “Dear Obert – Greetings. Having lots of fun here. Wish you were here. Will write again. Love from Minnie & Mother & Ruth.” Yes, it was an obvious exaggeration, but it caught your attention and might have set the hook, so to speak. If Obert was a fisherman, his next vacation trip might have been to Okoboji.
Another picture postcard from the early 1900s, which appears to be an actual black-and-white photo, shows about 50 fish hanging on two stringers and is labeled “one day’s catch.” Even if all those fish were not caught in one day, it is yet another lure (so to speak).
It was an easy, cheap, and broad-reaching marketing program for the Okoboji area. It is hard to imagine that it was not a factor in establishing the Lakes area as a go-to resort. By the mid-1930s, the Okoboji area was known far and wide and was attracting visitors from California to New York.
How picture postcards can build friendships and change lives
David Lipsey, a cousin from Washington, D.C., who grew up in Des Moines mostly in the 1960s, has spent the better part of his lifetime collecting and mailing picture postcards — especially used picture postcards. You read that correctly. He seeks out old picture postcards that have been used as originally intended — inscribed with a short note and mailed to a friend or family member — and reuses them in appropriate situations. The pictures on the cards always relate in some way to the lives of the persons who receive them.
He has mailed me numerous cards with pictures of the cities I have lived in, scribbling brief notes in the small open spaces left by the previous sender.
David has sent thousands of picture postcards, including more than 700 of them over the years to one longtime friend, all in the genre “Why Don’t You Write?” He has scanned and kept a record of every card sent, noting that the recipient now has “the definitive collection of these in the world.”
He likes to acquire rare or unusual sets of alphabet postcards – one for each letter of the alphabet. He mails them to children in his life, one or two a week, at the age when they are starting to learn the alphabet.
When he would travel for business, he would deliver postcards he had collected, both used and unused, from the cities he would be visiting, a way of establishing a memorable connection with the person on whom he would be calling.
He has acquired a massive collection of old postcards that has been displayed by a museum in Washington and he has used his postcards in unusual ways, including, when possible, connecting the cards with the original senders.
He once found a postcard marked “D-DAY” from a young soldier shipping out from the U.S. on that date in 1944. He tracked down how the card had ended up at a stamp show, where he found it, then tracked down the young man who sent it from Billerica, Massachusetts. The World War II soldier was a decorated veteran, so David connected with the American Legion in the city where the man lived, had the card framed, and arranged for it to be reunited with the sender and his family. The card was delivered to him by the American Legion leader one Veteran’s Day when the man was the local parade marshal.
He also has won contests through his postcard collection. Nordstrom Department Stores once challenged people to send a postcard from an exotic place. David mailed a postcard of a coconut. He won – or, rather, his wife, Diane, won the contest – a $1,000 Nordstrom shopping spree.
David’s partners in picture postcard revival have been his sister, Stephanie Reeves (nee Lipsey), who also grew up in Des Moines and now resides in Houston, and his cousin (and mine), Ric Teller, who grew up in Hastings, Nebraska, and now resides in the Los Angeles area.
Stephanie said she and David started exchanging postcards via mail more than 50 years ago, when David left home for boarding school and she was starting high school in West Des Moines. Stephanie’s cards were all handmade – ephemera and small paintings – and David has saved all of them.
Des Moines readers: If you remember David or Stephanie from Des Moines, and want to send one or both a picture postcard, let me know. I will provide the mailing address(es) privately via email.
Ric recalls a particular situation that demonstrates the power of the early picture postcards. His grandfather, Fred Teller, was a young salesman of business machine products and tobacco in the early 1900s, traveling the country. During this time, he sent dozens of picture postcards to Minnie Judas in New Jersey. The early cards carried her address only. But after March 1, 1907, the non-photo side of the postcard was split so Fred could write Minnie’s name and address on one half, and a brief love note on the other. The postcards must have worked their magic, Ric said. Fred and Minnie were married before the year was out.
So picture postcards transformed lives, relationships, and vacation and travel plans. They established long-term connections, and to some degree, they helped shape the country. Not bad for a thin piece of cardboard, about 3 inches by 5 inches in size, decorated with a creative illustration, a few words of text, and a one-cent stamp.
A footnote . . .
According to an inflation calculator, one cent in 1898 would be the equivalent of 36 cents today. Unfortunately, the cost of mailing a postcard today has increased by a bit more than that, to 51 cents. The cost of old cards begins at a few dollars, and can go up substantially from there. But for $5 you probably can buy and mail a fairly respectable old picture postcard. If it is the right card in the right situation, it could create a memorable and lasting impression or memory.
In today’s world, that kind of return on a $5 investment seems like a bargain.
Also: Did you receive the email I sent you with my mother's full story attached?
Wonderful that you went to the trouble of passing them down a generation or two in an appropriate way! They will be far more meaningful than if you had simply handed the cards to them.