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A 5.5x3.5" vintage half tone photo postcard (NOT a modern reprint) from the estate of a vintage postcard collector. This was part of a huge collection of antique postcards.
* We always automatically combine orders for shipping, so add as many postcards as you’d like to your order!
Photo Overview
This colorized postcard captures a massive log jam on a river in the Maine woods, dating to the early 1900s. A lone logger stands amid thousands of felled timber logs stretching as far as the eye can see, with a distant lumber camp building visible along the tree-lined far bank. The sheer scale of the jam is remarkable - logs completely cover the river surface from bank to bank, a testament to the booming timber industry of the era.
The publisher is printed in the lower right corner, consistent with a Souvenir Post Card Company or similar national publisher of the Edwardian period. The divided-back format and stamp box indicating 'one cent United States and Canada' dates this card to the 1907-1915 window.
Historical Notes
Log driving - floating cut timber downriver to sawmills - was the primary means of transporting lumber in Maine throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. Log jams like the one depicted were a constant hazard and required skilled 'river pigs' or log drivers to break them up, often at great personal risk. Maine's rivers, including the Penobscot, Kennebec, Androscoggin, and St. Croix, served as highways for billions of board feet of timber annually during the industry's peak. By the mid-20th century, mechanized trucking had replaced river drives almost entirely. Maine's last major commercial log drive on the Kennebec River ended in 1976, and the Penobscot River saw its final drive in 1971, closing a chapter on one of New England's most iconic and dangerous industries.
Print analysis
This is a colorized halftone lithographic postcard - not a real photo postcard. Zooming in reveals a visible dot pattern consistent with halftone printing, and the color is applied lithographically rather than photographically. This is a standard commercial postcard print of the divided-back era (post-1907). It is not an RPPC.
Condition
All postcards we sell are in fair to excellent vintage condition. Please see photos for any tears, folds, smudges, or other age damage that may be present.
