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  • The Ohio: The Historic River in Vintage Postcard Art, 1900–1960 by John A. Jakle and Dannel McCollum
  • Virginia C. Young
The Ohio: The Historic River in Vintage Postcard Art, 1900–1960. By John A. Jakle and Dannel McCollum. (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2017. Pp. 172.)

Postcards may seem passé now, but I love them because they provide a unique view of history. My grandparents collected postcards from all over the world, and my father recently passed the collection on to me, so I was delighted when I was asked to read The Ohio: The Historic River in Vintage Postcard Art, 1900–1960. Written by John Jakle, professor emeritus of geography at the University of Illinois, and former Champaign, Illinois, mayor Dannel McCollum who has a graduate degree in history, the book includes reproductions of 169 vintage postcards to give the feel of an early-twentieth-century journey on the Ohio River.

There is a wealth of scholarship on the Ohio River region; however, historians have focused primarily on specific portions of the region or on particular topics. Jakle and McCollum consider the river as a whole to emphasize its importance to the development of the Midwest and the nation. In doing so, they hope to promote its designation as a national heritage corridor. Previous efforts to that end failed in the early 1990s, at least in part because government officials did not appreciate that Ohio River communities were bound by a “common heritage” (viii). The authors wrote this book to demonstrate the region’s shared heritage.

That heritage comes alive through descriptions of Ohio River communities between 1900 and 1960 and through the postcards. The authors use vintage postcards rather than photographs to emphasize that shared heritage because, they argue, postcards “suggested what was important to an area and how those things ought to be viewed” (ix). Thus, postcards uniquely help us understand what Americans were encouraged to value and how those shared values fostered a shared heritage.

The book’s organization follows the path of the Ohio River from its beginning at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to its end where it joins the Mississippi River at Cairo, Illinois. This gives the reader a feeling of actually traveling its [End Page 116] length. The introduction includes a brief history of the river and some of the historiography on the topic as well. There is also a fascinating discussion of the history of postcards in the early twentieth century, including how postcard images were often changed in order to emphasize certain positive aspects of a subject while downplaying others that were considered less desirable. For example, it was commonplace to make a city street look more modern by removing things such as overhead telephone lines or signs that were on a building. There are seven chapters, with the first exploring the city of Pittsburgh. The remaining chapters each focus on a particular geographic section of the journey, beginning with “Pittsburgh to Wheeling” in chapter two and ending with a trip from “Evansville to Cairo” in chapter seven.

The book’s strength is the postcards, which provide a window into the cities and towns that popped up along the river. While each postcard is unique, many of them depict common themes, such as downtown areas, railroads, bridges, factories, and the 1907 and 1937 floods. And while many readers may be familiar with certain locations along the Ohio River, they can still expect to have their interest piqued by the postcard images. For example, a few include handwritten notes on the front such as a postcard of downtown Steubenville, Ohio, circa 1900, upon which the sender wrote to their grandmother asking, “Don’t you think this street looks rather citified. [sic] We have others just as good, too” (51). I can’t help but wonder why the sender wanted to convince their grandmother that Steubenville was indeed a city.

It is a daunting task to describe the Ohio River and its communities in one book, but Jakle and McCollum do a good job if you are looking for a brief introduction to these towns and cities in the early twentieth century. Historians will benefit from the extensive bibliography. Casual fans...

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