Vintage Texas State Postcard
One of the most popular images on Free Vintage Art is a wonderful vintage postcard of California. The card itself is in the shape of the state with a map featuring famous landmarks on the front.
While not quite as cool as that vintage postcard, this one featuring the state of Texas is full of vintage appeal and the latest addition to our American landscape images collection.
This vintage Texas state postcard features a map of the entire state with each corner of the card having an image that has Texas written all over it. First off we have a homage to one to the largest industries in the state – the oil industry. Next we have a picture of a longhorn cow. If you’ve never seen one of these guys in real life, pictures don’t do them justice. Some of them have horns so large, it leaves you wondering how the animal could possibly hold up its head under the weight. They also come in a huge variety of colors, many of them are speckled and have coats similar to the breed of horse I only know as Indian paints.
Along with the longhorn and the oil field, this vintage Texas state postcard shows the beautiful capitol building in Austin. And, finally, this postcard features one of my fondest memories of Texas – fields full of bluebonnets! The person who put together this postcard must have had some ties to Texas. It has become a tradition for folks living in the southern half of Texas, where you can find miles upon miles of fields covered in bluebonnets each spring, to bring their young children to a field and snap a photo of them sitting amongst the many blue blooms.
This postcard was produced by the E.C. Kropp Company sometime between 1907 and 1956. The Milwaukee, WI, company originally published cards under the name Kropp. They were bought out by another company in 1956 which is how we know this card is no older than that. It was most likely printed in the 1930s or very early 1940s. Since it was published without a copyright date, we know, here in the United States, it is in the public domain now.
The back of the card included a description which read:
Texas is as large as the combined area of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois. It is 17 ½ times as large as Massachusetts. It’s greatest length is about 903 miles; greatest breadth 864 miles (about as far as from New York to Chicago); area 265,896 sq. miles.
I did edit this one slightly to remove some blemishes and square it off. Time and perhaps the postal service had left their marks on the original. It is a shame that they didn’t make the word ‘Texas’ a bit more readable, but I left all of the text in its original form. I’ll leave it to you to change if the mood strikes. I also resized it to print at the 4×6 postcard size.
Enjoy!
