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 