Antique & Vintage Postcards

Four Edwardian visitors — a gentleman in a boater hat and three women in the full skirts and shirtwaists of circa 1905 — perch atop a massive glacial erratic at Sacandaga Park, New York, gazing out over a wide valley while the rock face beneath them bears the carved initials of earlier visitors. The soft hand-tinted color is typical of British-printed Edwardian souvenir cards, and the scene distills the leisured summer culture of Sacandaga, an amusement and resort park served by the Fonda, Johnstown & Gloversville Railroad until the Great Sacandaga Lake reservoir project erased much of the valley in 1930. Published by Valentine & Sons of New York and printed in Great Britain, the card was addressed to a recipient named John — a name written in careful copperplate on the undivided back, suggesting this predates the 1907 divided-back standard and making it a genuine Edwardian artifact of a place now largely underwater.