Modes of communication are changing with the times.  Nowhere is this more apparent than at the Central Rappahannock Heritage Center.  Cursive writing is not taught in most schools.  Many people under the age of forty cannot write or read longhand.  We no longer keep in touch by writing letters and notes, we send emails, texts and tweet.  A fading tradition is the postcard.  Have you tried to buy a postcard lately?  Once they were souvenirs of a trip, available in stores. Postcards also advertised restaurants and places to stay and visit.

The Center has a large collection of postcards, some dating back to the early twentieth century.  Postcards peaked in the mid-twentieth century.  One group of postcards showcases the motels, motor courts and tourist homes on the major traffic routes on Highway One and Route 301.  These once busy roads (before Interstate 95) led travelers north and south; Florida was often the destination. One hotel postcard stated "On Route 1, the shortest Route to Florida. All paved."

The most humorous and strangest collection of postcards are linen textured cards identified as "No. 926 Freak Vegetables".  They called attention to Marye, Virginia, an unincorporated farming community in southeast Spotsylvania County.  Apparently Marye had extremely rich soil and phenomenal growing conditions.  The postcards depict enormous vegetables - a stalk of celery, an ear of corn and a cucumber stretch the entire length of railroad flat cars.  Two onions, an apple and two cabbages fill three other flat cars on the postcards. The cards date from 1943 and 1944 and were sent to Lieutenant Druid Mills from Spotsylvania, an Army officer, by his sister Ida Mills Chewning and her daughter.

These cards were available from a distributor who printed the name of any community on the card.

Do you have postcards of the Central Rappahannock area?  If you do, please consider donating them, they tell many stories.  Consider visiting the Center to see the collections that tell our local history.

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