I love these old postcards with thoroughfares as their theme. The life and bustling activity on each, yet somewhat subdued against the restless movement of today. And of course, the main point of looking at these is to check out those long-gone rides. In the image above, Carson City, Nevada.
Olympia, Washington.
Fort Collins, Colorado.
Redding, California.
Missoula, Montana.
Hye, my town, Fort Collins! I just drove through that section half an hour ago on a bagel quest. The Aggie is still there and still booking acts, the art deco Northern Hotel at the far right now hosts a Starbucks. The street (Hwy 287) is still two lanes in each direction with a common center parking aisle, pull in from either direction after being sure nobody else is doing the same from the other direction.
Fort Collins as I remember it, when we drove through it once or twice on the way to the Rockies for our summer vacations.
It was known for its superb cantaloupes, grown on the field nearby, which are undoubtedly now all tracts of housing. They used to sell the melons in stands, and were brought up to Estes Park. I have vivid memories of eating a perfect cool and sugary one on the steps of the grocery store in Estes Park after a very long mountain hike.
There has been a lot of growth over the decades but you might be surprised, there is still lots of agriculture and growth of the city has been constrained quite a bit in favor of leaving dedicated open space and room for more agriculture, it doesn’t seamlessly blend into any neighboring town. The surrounding towns have grown more and quicker as a result with lots of expansion as people are drawn to the area.
Sugar beets were apparently the claim to fame for FoCo in its earliest era, perhaps cantaloupes grow in the same conditions, I don’t know. Now the one thing that is sold seasonally at pop-up stands all over the area are Palisade peaches, grown on the Western Slope near the town of Palisade (off I-70) and produce a bit of a frenzy reminding me of the Seinfeld episode(s) with Kramer and the Mackinac peaches…
Good to hear that.
Back in the early 60s, we would take Hwy 6 out through Nebraska and into eastern Colorado as far as Sterling, then take 14 to Fort Collins, I loved that stretch of 14, as I have always been a big fan of empty roads and wide open spaces.
In the early ’70s, I would still take that route in my VW, as I much preferred it to I-80.
I just took Hwy 14 the other way last week from FC to Sterling as I had to go to Nebraska! The Pawnee Grassland area out there is magnificent (and huge) as are the couple of little tiny towns on the way. Everything was green and in bloom due to the almost daily rain showers we’ve been having. I came back on I-80/I-25 which on that stretch above 14 is no less desolate and wide open as there was supposed to be severe weather on 14, although I still hit a big pocket of it on 80… I’m guessing Hwy 14 hasn’t changed much in the last 60 years beyond maybe being a bit wider with a better shoulder.
I think Fort Collins is where Out Of Spec Reviews is now based. I watch a lot of Kyle Connor’s videos on YT – very thorough discussions on most aspects of EV’s.
Yeah, they aren’t very far from me, their driveway usually is overflowing with five or six different EVs at a time, both the ones they own and the ones they have on loan. Friendly guys.
This was my part of Colorado as well.
I’m old enough to remember open spaces between Ft.Collins, Loveland, Windsor and Greeley.
It is ironic that Ft.Collins is claiming it supports any open spaces. Even when I lived there, Ft.Collins was nothing east-west, but all north-south on College Avenue. Even when it was only a fraction of its population, Ft.Collins required a car to drive anywhere on College. When Budweiser opened in the late 1970s, it was out in the far eastern part of town – now it no longer it far out anywhere. One can now drive from Denver to pert-near the Wyoming border and not leave the Front Range corridor. It is stunning how over-expanded this part of Colorado has become.
There are now 120,000 more people in Ft. Collins than when I lived there in 1980. There are over 50,000 more in Loveland.
Larimer County
1970 89,900 68.5%
1980 149,184 65.9%
1990 186,136 24.8%
2000 251,494 35.1%
2010 299,630 19.1%
2020 359,066 19.8%
You’re exaggerating quite a bit, when’s the last time you were here? It’s still open space between all of those 4 cities to the point where if you wanted to get from the edge of one of them to the edge of the next, 99% of the population would not remotely be even considering walking. Not like parts of the Chicago or LA or Metro Denver area where the difference between a store in one town and a store in the next is one step, i.e. contiguous.
Budweiser (opened in ’88, not the late ’70s) is still in the extreme northeast corner with the nearest development at least a couple of miles away. Nobody could “live nearby” and walk to work if they worked there.
Denver to Wyoming has plenty of wide open stretches on I-25 where there is not a building in sight. The majority of that is north of Fort Collins, only broken up by the one-offramp Town of Wellington. The “Corridor” is mostly Denver to maybe Northglenn or Westminster.
It (and the general area) is expanding due to it being a generally desirable place to live.
Sounds like much still the same! That’s good in my eyes!
The historically expansive and wide downtown streets of so many North American cities, making accommodations for bike lanes, and light rail, so much easier today. And safer sight lines. I recall, when heavy centre lane and parking space oil stains, were everywhere. One of the least attractive aspects, of the earlier auto eras. That, and car exhaust fumes.
As a little kid (under 7 years old), one of my earliest memories in pictures of early ’60s city streets, was the very famous shot of the 1964 Anchorage earthquake. Had a strong impression on me, at the time. Especially, that batwing Chevrolet, and the Volvo.
Diagonal parking seemed to last longer in the US, than Canada. A local town (Smiths Falls), finally giving up diagonal parking for parallel parking, in the last few years. More attractive, and cleaner, for viewing architecture and storefronts.
Some towns in the Abitibi area of Quebec still do diagonal parking like Val-d’Or
https://goo.gl/maps/GT4Afz3RhMmMXCyg9
Malartic https://goo.gl/maps/r27T1tfDRbVxMnyu5
This streeview of Amos is from 2018, we got to check if they still do diagonal parking. https://goo.gl/maps/PAxLWwunQE7ziWWS8
Allows them plenty of room, if they decide to go to parallel parking, with bike lanes.
My old hometown of Arvida, PQ still has diagonal parking, with an additional row for good measure.
I have never actually seen diagonal parking in the middle of the street, perhaps that’s a bygone age and/or western thing, as a driver who cares about my car that seems way to vulnerable. There are some cities where their downtown streets are wide because they had streetcar or even heavy railroad ROWs run in the center in the first place, which were dismantled or rerouted in the 50s and 60s. No idea if that’s represented in any of these postcards but I wouldn’t be surprised.
As far as attractive aspects, I’d rather see the old neon signs than the modern day neon spandex clad cyclists myself.
The width of that main street in Ft. Worth does seem rather exceptionally wide. And yes, I can just see two trolley tracks running down the middle of it.
It’s no different than pulling in and out of a diagonal spot at the normal side of the street with the bonus that if you have the sightline you can pull out forward into sort of a U-turn and be going the way you came from. We still have a streetcar that runs occasionally on a center section on a perpendicular street and i believe it may have run down this street as well before making the turn onto Mountain Street.
One street over to this one is a similar street (not as wide) but with a heavy railroad line in the middle of the road, used multiple times daily for freight that trundles through town at about 5mph as there aren’t crossing gates. If you google map satellite view it, it’s Mason Street.
Not too far from me, Mackinaw City Michigan has it. 2 eastbound lanes and 2 westbound lanes. With diagonal parking between them. And diagonal parking on the outside too. It’s a typical tourist trap the summer. In the winter the town is 99% closed.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mackinaw_City,_Michigan.jpg
We didn’t have parking like that in small congested Boston.
Memories light the corners of what’s left of my mind. Those were the days of great cars and friendly people. Have similar postcards of my city. Now, EVERY THING has changed. Historic buildings 🏰 have been replaced with UP scale monstrosities. Cars? SUVS and crossovers pack revised parking spaces. No more parallel parking! As the Cole Porter song 🎵 predicted, ANYTHING GOES! 🤮
People in the 1960s probably said the same thing when wistfully gazing at postcards from the teens and ’20s…There are probably a lot of people that look at scenes such as these and see bad memories as well, reminding them of unjust times with rampant repression, strife, and intolerance. Just like people in the 2060s will probably look at postcards published in the 2020s…
Nice to look at, my version of rose colored glasses .
-Nate
Wonder what that street surface is made of in Missoula? Looks like rough dirt.
The two generations of “Rambler’s” in the Missoula MT, pic really pop out.
A nice 1957 Pontiac in the first pic. Although the car was well into its planning stages when he arrived, new Pontiac head Bunkie Knudsen managed to get the decades old Silver Streak “suspenders” removed before production. That instantly changed the personality of a car long considered a favorite of elderly librarians. It started a magnificent 15 year run for Pontiac where it often placed number three in the sales race. I can’t think of a better management team than Knudsen, John Delorean and Pete Estes, who ran the division for much of that time.
Cars in nice colours – whatever were they thinking ?
Cars started in all black, like Henry Ford did. And it’s ironic that the current Toyota RAV4 is roughly the same shape as a 1932 Ford. And the most common colors are black, white, silver and gray. Things change and then they go right back where they started.
And now we’re back to “cars for those who can afford one”.
^^^^^ this is getting so true
Love historical highway, and main street pics.
Pic from 1932, showing the Trans-Canada Highway, at the Manitoba and Ontario border. Great Depression-era make work project. Roadside posts in Ontario, were painted in this pattern for years.
Here one historical shot of St-Luc boulevard at Asbestos now known as Val-des-Sources in Quebec.
https://www.hippostcard.com/listing/vtg-asbestos-quebec-canada-le-boulevard-st-luc-centre-commercial-postcard/44732451
Part of St-Luc boulevard was realigned and most of the buildings demolished due to the expansion of the asbestos mine back then.
That 67 or 68 Buick Wildcat really sticks out. I mean sticks way out into the street even though his front wheel is right up to the curb. That car, to me, is the epitome of the low, wide and long Harley Earl ethos.
At least as of 2017 there was still a florist in that location in Olympia WA. After JC Penny moved to the mall in the 90’s the repurposing of the building is what spurred the town to institute design review procedures in the downtown. To the photographer’s right is Sylvester park which is in front of the Old Capitol Building now home to the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction which is why I’m familiar with that particular area of Olympia.
The ubiquitous Beetle in the early Olympia, WA card.
Can you make out what year Beetle it is ? .
I cannot .
-Nate
Unfortunately the VIN number is not visible.