Antique & Vintage Postcards

Passengers cluster at the base of one of America's most audacious feats of funicular engineering — the Great Incline at Mount Lowe, California, photographed in brilliant hand-applied color just as an open-sided car prepares to haul visitors 1,300 feet straight up the San Gabriel Mountains along 3,000 feet of steep cable track. Ladies in long Edwardian skirts and men in straw boaters crowd the platform beside the sleek electric trolley that brought them here from Pasadena, all of them about to experience what promoter Thaddeus Lowe called "the world's greatest mountain trolley trip." The Mt. Lowe Railway operated from 1893 to 1937; this card's undivided-style back and stamp rate instructions date it to the early 1900s–1910s. The reverse is unused, with a charming illustrated back featuring a silhouette bear and the Mt. Lowe Post Card branding.