Real photo postcard. Postmarked Jul 2, 1929
This is a relatively late real photo postcard. By the late 1920s much less detailed printed postcards had begun to usurp the market of the more detailed real photo cards, to the disbenefit of local photographers who produced the real photo cards in their darkrooms.
Meramec Springs, six miles from St. James, Missouri, in Phelps County, has the seventh largest flow of Missouri springs. The average from 1922-1929 listed in The Large Springs of Missouri (1944) was 96,300,000. Both its beauty and historical utilization make it a popular park today. Like many of Missouri’s major springs it was preserved as a state park after earlier industrial utilization. Today’s peaceful setting is a stark contrast to the industrial beehive that once operated here. The spring was dammed to provide waterpower for the extraction of iron ore from hematite. Relics of the iron works active from 1826-1877 are park features. That nature can be restored in this way is hopeful. Missouri State Parks, a Division of the Department of Natural Resources, has been a national leader in acquiring and protecting exquisite natural resources like these great springs.
“The clear water bubbling from the basic and rushing over the falls, under an arch bridge, and down the spring branch, adds to the picturesque charm of the valley and its surrounding wooded hills … At times during the period 1826 to 1877, water power was developed at the spring to serve the Meramec iron works which exploited a deposit of hematite iron ore that had been found at the surface about a half mile west of the spring. … The ruins of the old blast furnace and the remains of the chimneys of the forest still stand in a broad, shaded park beside the spring branch. Picknickers and visitors to the spring enjoy the beautiful natural setting which surrounds these vestiges of one of Missouri’s early mining communicates.”
The Large Springs of Missouri by H. C. Beckman and N. S. Hinchey, 1944
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