Antique & Vintage Postcards

A ribbon of white water threads down a moss-draped basalt cliff in this luminous real-photo postcard of Horsetail Falls on the Historic Columbia River Highway — one of Oregon's earliest scenic drives, engineered in the teens and celebrated as America's first planned scenic road. The sepia silver-gelatin print captures the falls in full flow, framed by fern-covered canyon walls, while a handsome ornamental bridge with arched iron railings spans the creek below in the foreground, lending a sense of romantic scale to the 176-foot plunge. Numbered "12" in a series, the image was made by the Portland-area studio of Cross & Dimmitt, active photographers of Columbia Gorge scenery in the 1910s–1920s, and the crisp detail of the bridge ironwork and rock face speaks to the care of a skilled commercial photographer working in the RPPC format at its artistic peak.