NARROWSBURG, NY — Somebody drew a big index finger, pointing to a spot on a panoramic postcard of Narrowsburg. “This is where I am stopping,” the annotation reads. The signature is hard to make out, but the writer is glad to know “your Mother is resting.” The postmark is dated 1913.

This year’s exhibit at the Ten Mile River Scout Museum showcases that card and many more. An exhibit of postcards featuring the Tusten area—and of course the museum that will host the exhibition—opens on Saturday, July 5.

“People are fascinated by postcards,” said John Dowd, co-curator of the exhibit. They’re fascinated now, and people were fascinated then too; postcards of almost anything you can imagine were printed. The cards give a snapshot, as it were, into Tusten’s past.

“Everybody loved postcards,” writes David Malatzky, co-curator of the exhibit and associate curator at the museum, in the exhibit’s guidebook. Millions of cards were purchased and sent to family and friends, he continues. “Postcard collecting far exceeded stamp and coin collecting in popularity, and a sizable postcard collection could be obtained for a minimal cost.” 

New York City boasted 168 postcard companies in 1909.

“Before radio and television, a favorite pastime in American homes was reviewing albums filled with picture postcards,” he writes.

Tourists started arriving after the Erie Railroad did, and they bought cards, wrote messages on them, and sent them back. 

What’s on the cards? The places people stayed at were popular. The exhibit offers Bauer’s Farmhouse; the Silver Lake Farmhouse, owned by Victor Vanherk; Crystal Lake House; the Fox Lake House; and many more. 

People liked random local scenes: Lakes—check out the Half Moon Lake—or Halfmoon Lake—and its bath house, dated 1925. The bathhouse is a long, low building right next to the water. Did bathers sit in the house and wet their feet or take a careful if limited swim? It was popular—or maybe the owner wanted people to think it was popular—so that it is represented on multiple cards.

There’s a “road scene” in Lava (the place, not the substance).

You’ll find churches, including St. Francis Xavier and St. Paul’s Lutheran in Narrowsburg. Post offices. A rose. 

“Everyone was collecting postcards,” said Malatzky recently. And buying the cards “reinforced the local economy.”

“They were locally printed, usually,” Dowd said. Especially during and after the war. “Prior to World War I, cards were ordered from Germany.” 

“The key was price,” Dowd continued. Postcards were “inexpensive, often one cent during World War I, then the price went up to two cents. A cheap way of sending messages,” especially in the days before phone service, or affordable calls.

“And they were free advertising,” Malatzky said. “‘Look at all the nature!’ Postcards really reinforced the tourist industry in the teens and ‘20s. And there are thousands of them out there… representing what was going on in the region at the time.”

“There were many, many changes in Tusten,” Dowd said, thanks to the influx of visitors. Postcards documented them—the images on the front, but also the writing on the back. And the writing on the front, which sometimes winds around the photo. Dowd explained that many postcards consisted of the picture on the front and space for the address on the back. “This was before the back was divided in half,” which left room for a message. 

So people squeezed writing in where they could. 

Images also showed area businesses, Malatzky said. The economy was based on tourism: places to stay, fishing, hunting. “Free advertising. Postcards reinforced the message of the tourist industry in the ‘teens and ‘20s.”

A guidebook to the Tusten Postcards exhibit will be available for sale at the Ten Mile River Scout Museum. The cost is $12 if purchased at the museum or $16 to be shipped via first-class mail. 

You can learn more about the museum by visiting www.tmrmuseum.org or following Ten Mile River Scout Museum on Facebook. The museum is located at 1481 Crystal Lake Road. Call 845/252-2063 for information.