Winter Gateway 2022

Looking Back: Picturing t he trail
BY DAVID SOWDERS
Assistant Editor
Making their way
over the Apache
Trail, the travelers
declared Roosevelt Dam
“a very marvelous piece of
work.” Their next stop was
the “little mining town” of
Globe, then to Phoenix and
California – “A wonderful
trip.” Somewhere along the
way they bought a souvenir
postcard of the Trail, mailing
it to a relative or friend
back east.
It was mid-November
1927; the Apache Trail was
22 years old and the Globe
& Bowie Railroad, aboard
which their postcard was
mailed, had been around for
more than 30. But the card
is also part of the story of an
immigrant who made it big.
Curt Teich was 19 when
he came to the United States
from his native town in
Thuringia, now part of Germany.
Coming from a long
line of printers and publishers,
he had worked as an apprentice
printer. Teich landed
in New York City in 1895,
going to work as a printer’s
devil. He soon moved on to
Chicago, where the company
he founded became the
world’s largest printer of scenic
postcards – like the one
the travelers sent in 1927, depicting
the Apache Trail and
Superstition Mountain.
The Apache Trail, initial-
David Sowders/Copper Corridor
Superstition Mountain and the Apache Trail, as seen on a vintage
Curt Teich postcard
ly called the Tonto Wagon
Road, was built as a supply
road to the Roosevelt Dam
construction site. The road
follows the course of a Native
American foot trail. With
Apaches providing much of
the labor, it was finished on
Sept. 3, 1905. After the trail’s
completion, the Southern Pacific
Railway Company started
offering side trips down
the scenic road to the dam.
Around this time, Curt
Teich brought a German
postcard style to the United
States, launching the colorful,
large-lettered “Greetings
From” cards that would become
so well-known. Teich
based them on the German
“Gruss Aus” cards that started
appearing in the 1890s.
His firm, Curt Teich & Company,
was also a pioneer in
offset printing, which they
started using in 1910.
In 1905, as the Apache
Trail was nearing completion,
Teich crossed the country by
train. Carrying a camera, he
took photos of numerous
small-town businesses along
the way. From these pictures,
he made his first sizable print
run.
“The frontier has passed,
the cattle are vanishing, the
west is changed,” wrote
famed author Zane Grey in
a Sept. 1927 letter to the Coconino
Sun newspaper,
published by the Sun the
same month our travelers
visited Roosevelt Dam and
Globe.
In November 1927, the
Phelps Dodge mine at Morenci
was producing an average
of 3.75 million pounds of
copper a month, but mining
could still be dangerous
work. In Superior, five men
lost their lives in a fire at the
Magma Mine; crews from
the Globe and Miami mines
helped battle the fire. On
November 24, Globe High
School ended its football season
with a “fiercely fought”
6-6 tie against Safford.
During his 1905 trip, Teich
personally took $30,000
worth of postcard orders
during this cross-country
journey. As the company
grew, he would employ hundreds
of traveling salesmen/
photographers. These men
not only sold postcards to
homes and worked with
businesses to create advertising
cards, but also took
the pictures. Like the Apache
Trail postcard – printed under
the company’s C.T. American
Art line – a number
of pictures depicted scenes
in Arizona, including the
Globe-Miami area.
In June 1928, Curt Teich
& Company records show, a
man named Henry (or Harry)
Herz ordered a number
of postcards featuring scenes
around Globe and Miami;
designs included the Gila
County Courthouse, Bullion
Plaza School, Broad Street,
Sullivan Street, the Southern
Pacific Depot and the Claypool
Tunnel.
Curt Teich & Company
remained in business until
1978, closing shop around
four years after the passing of
its founder. The Apache Trail
remains, though much of that
scenic road is now impassable
due to fire-related flood
damage in the last few years.
Gateway to the Copper Corridor 2022
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