Postcard Program Sparks Baileys Harbor Memories

The large crowd at the September meeting of the Baileys Harbor Historical Society had a rare opportunity to see what their town once looked like through a century’s worth of postcard images.

A computerized program, compiled by Kristen Peil and her aunt, Suzanne Bauldry, consisted of scores of picture postcards, most from the scrapbooks of Bauldry’s sister, the late Diane Peil.

The earliest date on the postcards shown was 1905, but some were likely older. Leann Despotes, who had researched the history of postcards, noted that the first ones appeared in 1873. “Postcards were the e-mail of their day,” she said. But as home telephones became more common, calls replaced cards as a quick means of communication. According to Wikipedia, the “golden age” of postcards lasted 1907 to 1914, with about 678 million mailed in 1910 alone. Many of the German publishing houses that produced the finest cards were destroyed during World War I, and hand-tinted cards, popular before the age of color photography, were discontinued when many of the women who painted them became ill from the lead in the paint as they dampened the tips of their brushes on their tongues.

The evening at the Baileys Harbor Town Hall was enhanced by frequent comments from audience members, who shared stories as they spotted familiar sights from their childhoods, debated the years that various structures (especially sawmills) fell victim to fires, and recalled the chronology of ownership of buildings that remain a part of daily life in Baileys Harbor. An old picture of children and teachers at an early Baileys Harbor School piqued special interest. And a view of the old town hall reminded someone that when a plague of locusts settled near the building, residents were hired to toss around handfuls of DDT mixed with sawdust.

The importance of lumbering to the local economy was evident in the many shots of stacked cordwood and the docks – especially the 300-foot Anclam Dock – where the wood was loaded on steamers. (The area around that dock, by the way, was once called the Baileys Harbor Yacht Club!) There were many exclamations over pictures of the Quonset hut movie theater, built soon after World War II, where several in the audience reported receiving their first kiss. It was a busy place, with three features a week and a ticket price of 25 cents.

There was a 1915 picture of Anclam’s General Store and the dining room of the Anclam Scenic Grove.

“I wonder what those chairs would cost today,” Bauldry mused. And a voice from the back of the hall responded, “$65!”

The first phone number for the Anclam Cottages behind the present-day Lutheran Church was 1R31, with the final numbers indicating three long rings and one short. “We knew which ring on the party line was ours,” Bauldry said, “but sometimes kids liked to listen to other conversations, too.”

Many of the cards depicted horses and buggies, including a 1915 shot of the old Brann Hardware Store, now the Saveur Restaurant. A 1920s-era car parked on the sidewalk in front of the Cotton Club was identified as belonging to the uncle of an audience member, which prompted another fellow to say one of his relatives still has the first car Bill Boettcher sold in Baileys Harbor.

One card showed two skunks cavorting on a mural at the old Flor-Ada Club, now Florian II, another featured H. C. Spring’s Cheap Cash Store, and another the Taste and Tattle Grill, owned by Despotes’s parents and located on the site of the present town marina. It was described as the town’s first “real restaurant.” There were references to Lightning Jim, the barber, whose unsteady hand (or lack of attention) resulted in customers departing with bits of tissue paper covering their numerous nicks.

There was a 1912 shot of the Coast Guard’s life-saving station, a picture of Bonnie Gordon posing in front of Gordon Lodge with a huge anchor, reported to have been hauled up near Anclam Dock. Someone asked if it’s still at the lodge, and the answer was that Bonnie took it with her when she moved to Montana. It was noted that the original McArdle house was divided in half and turned into cottages at Kangaroo Lake Resort. There were several pictures of early July 4 parades, one from 1909 featuring a float pulled by oxen. The parades all traveled from north to south then. Despotes thinks they probably changed direction when a larger staging area was needed.

Highway 57 was a gravel road in those days, and ladies in long dresses and men in suits and bowler hats strolled through town on a wooden sidewalk. A much more modern card showed a shapely young lady in a yellow bikini reading on the beach near the Ridges, while her young sons played nearby. (The surprised woman was in the audience and owned up to her identity.)

Mostly, the program featured only the fronts of the cards, but a few messages were also shown, including one of unknown date that said, “This town is getting deader than ever.” If the century-old postcards were truly the e-mail of the early 1900s, one wonders what Baileys Harbor residents interested in history will be looking at a century from now.

The historical society plans to put the postcards shown, plus the hundreds of others in Peil’s scrapbooks on a CD that will be sold to benefit the society. New officers elected at the meeting were: Leann Despotes, president; Kristen Peil, vice president/secretary; and Mary Moran, treasurer. It was announced that most of the goals set for the society’s first year have been met, including classes taught by Professor Steven Hey on how to conduct oral history interviews. The society now has more than 80 members. Despotes thanked Roy Cole, the outgoing president, for his invaluable assistance to the society, based on his experience with a similar group in Wauwatosa. The final meeting for 2010 will be a “surprise” on Nov. 11. For more information about the society, call Roy Cole at 920.839.1470.