Blast from the past: Petaluma’s history in 200 postcards

The history of Petaluma’s growth and development in the early 1900s is unusually visible today, thanks to the survival of hundreds of postcards from the period — postcards that have now been collected and published as a book.

Alice van Ommeren and KC Greaney, PhD, have published “Petaluma in Vintage Postcards.” The selection of 200 postcards tells Petaluma’s story as it grew from a strategic port location provisioning San Francisco during the Gold Rush to an agricultural and manufacturing town in the early decades of the 20th century. Below each postcard is a brief explanatory text. Together, the images comprise a near-complete visual history of Petaluma as it emerged from the 19th century.

“We wanted to ground the images in a historical context,” Greaney said. Chapter subjects reflect the scope of the survey, including rail and water transportation, early industry, chicken and eggs, and public institutions.

“As we put the book together, themes emerged,” van Ommeren said. “For example, Petaluma really did have the right to call itself the world’s egg basket.” An abundance of postcards from Petaluma’s poultry industry in the 1920s confirm it as the nation’s largest poultry-producing area at the time. They showcase some of the industry innovations that took place in Petaluma, including the first commercially-viable incubator for eggs, “colony houses,” or chicken houses that could be easily moved for ease of cleaning, and the first-known mechanical brooder for keeping chicks warm.

The postcards also show that Petaluma understood the public-relations potential of the boom and the role that postcards could play in promoting it. For example, Petaluma had a “chicken pharmacy” at the time — and a postcard to prove it (“The only store of its kind in the world”).

Chicken-and-egg boosterism reached its apex with “Chanticline,” a giant sculpture of a White Leghorn chicken representing Petaluma’s 6 million hens at the time. The artwork survives as a postcard.

The postcards in the book help us appreciate the scope of Petaluma’s achievement. There was no Golden Gate Bridge until 1937. The only way to get fresh eggs and chicken to San Francisco every day was by boat. Thus, Petaluma became a port, albeit one with a tide flat that complicated transport. “Scow schooners” carried chicken and eggs across the bay. When necessary, their flat bottoms allowed them to rest on the mud until the tide rose and allowed them to move on.

“Petaluma River was California’s third most important waterway, after the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers,” Greaney said.

But the importance couldn’t last.

According to local historian John Sheehy, “Being a slough that rose and fell with the tide twice a day inhibited the river as an efficient ferry route compared to rail, as did its many turns and twists, which weren’t straightened out completely by the Army Corp of Engineers until the well into the 20th century.”

As serious collectors, van Ommeren and Greaney used several strategies to build a collection of about 300 vintage postcards of Petaluma before deciding what to include in the book. Image selection was based on historic value as well as how well a postcard reproduced in black and white.

To look for specific images, they used Ebay, a vital source for collectors. Vintage postcard shows were also helpful. A key element in the world of postcard collecting, the shows are held regularly in the Bay Area. In fact, Van Ommeren serves as newsletter editor for the San Francisco Bay Area Post Card Club. An advantage of the shows is that the postcards are organized by county.

“It’s like a treasure hunt,” van Ommeren said.

Other sources include the Petaluma Historical Library and Museum, the Sonoma County History and Genealogy Library, and Petaluma Library’s History Room. Longtime postcard collectors Craig Blackstone, Lew Baer and Gail Unzelman also contributed images.

Petaluma is steeped in history.

Its historic downtown district is listed in the National Register of History Places, along with other residential, civic and commercial buildings. One of the few gaps in the book’s portrait of Petaluma is the still-existent Burdell Building at 405 East D St., completed in 1895. Another is the exterior of the long-gone Petaluma Incubator Company, although postcards survive showing the interior.

As the book’s introduction explains, privately printed postcards were first introduced in 1898 when Congress passed the Private Mailing Card Act. This lowered the postal rates of the cards, increasing their demand. However, the backs of postcards only allowed for the recipient’s address, leaving the front for image and message. In 1907 postcards with divided backs were permitted, which meant address and message on the back and image alone on the front. This was the beginning of what collectors call the Golden Age of Postcards.

Among collectors, postcards take third place after stamps and coins, with most postcard collectors being male seniors.

Van Ommeren, a lifelong postcard collector, is the author of “Stockton in Vintage Postcards” (2004), “Yosemite’s Historic Hotels and Camps” (2014) and “Stockton’s Golden Era: An Illustrated History” (2015). She moved to Petaluma a year ago from the South Bay.

Greaney has lived in Petaluma for three decades. Her degrees include a master’s in history. The two collectors shared the task of finding the images for the book as well as the historical research that gives context to the selected images.

Postcards, sadly, seem to be slowly vanishing from our culture.

“We don’t see the racks of cards everywhere like we used to,” van Ommeren said, noting that before phones became commonplace, the cards functioned “like phone calls … and they were a precursor of social media in that they link text and image.”

Van Ommeren and Greaney advise any non-collectors who find an interesting trove of postcards in the attic or elsewhere to consider donating them to the appropriate historical collection. While the cards are probably not worth much money, their cultural value could be significant.

“Don’t throw away your old cards,” van Ommeren said.

All proceeds from the sale of the book will go to the Petaluma Historical Library and Museum, where the book is being sold. It is also available at Copperfield’s Books or from the publisher, Arcadia. Copperfield’s in Petaluma will host an online author event for “Petaluma in Vintage Postcards” on Friday, Nov. 20, at 7 p.m. Get information for this event at CopperfieldsBooks.com.