Some postcards just draw me in. This is one of them. When I won this card on eBay the other day, I couldn’t wait to share it.
This real photo postcard doesn’t have any real historic value. It does show a little bit of the rail yard that was on Mason Street, north of Laporte Avenue. The water tank shows up in a number of Fort Collins railroad photographs.
It’s not a great photograph technically. The dog’s head peeking in on the bottom left probably isn’t what you want in a winning image. It’s pretty old, probably around 1910, but nothing like the 1867 photograph of the Overland Trail that I posted a few days ago.
I don’t know anything about sheep but I’m willing to bet that this sheep was a prize winner. Why else would this man pose for a picture with this animal? Anyways, it just looks like a prize winner.
Finally, and the thing that really sold me on the image, was the information on the back. The only name recorded for posterity is the sheep’s.
Let me introduce you to Ella, the railroad sheep.
Fort Collins Images 
Interesting. About this time, my Grandfather was dealing with both sheep and cattle as a partner in in the Fort Collins Packing Company. They had a slaughter house in the area between Laporte Ave and West Vine Drive, approximately in the area of the old radio towers. The market shop was at 225 W. Linden St. I have pictures from ca. 1908 and 1913 of the inside of the market. In the Ft. Collins archives, the 1913 picture is incorrectly labeled as “Fischer Market” by my aunt. I also have an undated picture of the men who worked at the slaughter house by a wagon. That picture has enough detail that you can see the flies all over their butcher aprons. Prior to 1908, the packing company was owned by a shady character name Tom Beach.
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