Railroad tracks arrow straight down the center of a narrow tropical street in old Tehuantepec, low adobe and tile-roofed buildings pressing close on both sides while small figures—a woman in red, children—go about their day beneath the broad canopy of a bare ceiba tree, purple hills rising in the distance. This early undivided-back-era color lithograph postcard captures the Isthmus of Tehuantepec at the dawn of the twentieth century, when the trans-isthmian railway was the shortest land route between the Atlantic and Pacific and Tehuantepec felt like the edge of the modern world. A grandmother named Connie mailed it from Holley, New York on July 31, 1909, to her granddaughter Veda in Spencerport, filling every inch of the image side with chatty news: neighbors going to Granger, Grandpa finishing his Puffed Wheat, and a sweet longing—"well Veda I miss you for smashin and dishes I tell you come while you can." The card bears a 1-cent Franklin green stamp and a sharp Holley, NY July 31 1909 circular date stamp.