30th June
2014
Here’s a mystery image from a collection of Spreckels-era transit records. Anyone recognize the date and place? 
6 Comments
Leave a Reply
ABOUT
A site for reading and discussion of San Diego history
RECENT POSTS
31st May 2023
21st October 2022
11th December 2019
24th June 2019
| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
| 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |
| 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 |
| 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 |
| 29 | 30 | 31 | ||||
Latest book
The locale of the photo is the southwest corner of the Mission Inn in Riverside, CA. The car bears the name Pacific Electric, partly hidden under its special event banner. The Pacific Electric interurban Red Line tracks ran past the main entrance of the Mission Inn on what was then called Seventh Street, and is now Mission Inn Avenue. The cross street at the left of the image is Main Street, now a pedestrian mall in that part of downtown Riverside. I’d guess the date is circa 1925, and I initially confirmed the locale by Googling Neblett’s Drug Store in the Main Street corner shop front.
On second glance, there is an additional mystery in this photo. It appears to be a cut-and-paste composite photo print. The Red Line car, its boarding passengers and the pavement in front of them have been superimposed on the wider view of the Mission Inn and the intersection at Seventh and Main. The discontinuity of the rails in the pavement in the lower left corner reveal the layering of images, and if you look closely at the back edge of the car and its roof line you’ll find the rest of the paste-up. This an old newspaper photo department practice, of the sort typically used to “juice up” a special event photo to better illustrate the accompanying story.
You got it, Will. This is a 1920s version of PhotoShop. The tracks and car are pasted over the Mission Inn shot. Quite a good job, actually. Since it’s probably a newspaper job I was hoping to find a newspaper account of what appears to be a rail excursion from San Diego. But it’s not the Union or Tribune. I’m about to check the LA Times. Could be the Sun.
Great post. I was checking constantly this blog and I’m impressed! Extremely helpful info specially the last part 🙂 I care for such information much. I was looking for this particular info for a very long time. Thank you and best of luck.
Wow! Thank you! I continuously needed to write on my site something like that. Can I take a fragment of your post to my website?
Enjoyed looking through this, very good stuff, thankyou. “What the United States does best is to understand itself. What it does worst is understand others.” by Carlos Fuentes.