A Look at History
100 Years of Mackinac Island Postcards, Part I
BY FRANK STRAUS

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the start of what is often called the "Golden Age" of American picture postcards. The usual date for the start of this period is 1907, the year Congress passed a law allowing postcard addresses to cover only one-half of the card. The other half could be used for a written message. Post-1907 postcards are called "divided back" cards by collectors, and many of them are bought and sold every day.

The legalization of the "divided back" card came just a few years after improvements appeared in the art of photographic lithography. Printing shops knew before this time how to make chromolithographs, colored reverse drawings originally drawn on a piece of smooth, flat, fine-grained stone. The stone could be inked and used to stamp multiple copies of colored prints on paper; the technique is familiar to graphic artists to this day. Enterprising businessmen, as far back as the 1880s and 1890s, printed chromolithographic pictures on pieces of cardboard paper to create a souvenir that could be mailed home. The new "postcards" appeared in the mails of all of the rich countries, first in Europe and then in the United States. The oldest Mackinac Island postcards, dating to the 1890s, are chromolithographs. They're printed in the pastel shades of color characteristic of this process.

At right: This colorful "Greeting from Mackinac Island" card is unused. Printed on the reverse is, "Authorized by act of Congress, May 19, 1989. This side is exclusively for the address."

In the first decade of the 1900s, several print shops independently developed new processes by which a photographic image could be transferred, or partly transferred, to a lithographic plate. The resulting image was carefully colored by hand and used to print images. After 1907, the "back" of a divided card could carry both the address and a message, freeing up the entire front of the card for the colored photographic drawing.

The new, accurate picture postcards were wildly popular. They could be mailed for a stamp that cost only one cent, and millions of them, bearing cheery messages such as cheery messages such as "Having a wonderful time, wish you were here," began showing up in mailboxes across the United States. Localities began to realize that the postcards were free advertising for their communities, and began to encourage their businesses to make images of all of the unusual or impressive sights of their area.

A 1906 depiction of Main Street Mackinac Island. Cards from this period, unlike the later "divided back" cards, used the whole back side for the address, leaving no room there for writ* ten messages. (Postcards courtesy of Tom Pfeiffelmann)

As the number of postcards multiplied, some Americans began to collect them. At first some travelers would just buy one or two more cards than they meant to mail out; they would bring the extras home as a small memento. By 1907, however, many travelers were ready to buy fistfuls of postcards as a major souvenir of their trip. Most of the postcards from this era that have been preserved to the present day were never used. They were set aside in a drawer, or mounted in specially published albums for the storage of blank postcards.

This scene of Mackinac Island overlooking Round Island was mailed in 1902. A black and white, 1906 postcard featuring Island House. "The Old Fort, Mackinac Island, Michigan" is the legend on this 1899 postcard. This 1906 postcard proclaims "Old Mission Church, built 1830, stands without any change the same today as when first built." Top right: This postcard featuring Grand Hotel was printed in 1902 by the Detroit Photographic Company.