I was happy to purchase today this oversized postcard that I've eyed for some time, for the cool setting and hand-tinting, even before I looked into the back story. It has been variously set in 1909, 1910 and 1911, but it's definitely the White Sox and they are at Royal Gorge in Colorado with something called the "Hanging Bridge" behind them. But what else?
Well, it seems (from my research) that the photo was taken, in B & W, by a well-known railroad photog named Beam on Feb. 27, 1910. The Sox were on their way to spring training--in San Francisco. Here's the original caption for the photo from the archives: "Men, women, children, and the Chicago White Sox pose by a Denver and Rio Grande passenger car and the Arkansas River at Hanging Bridge, in the Royal Gorge, Fremont County, Colorado. Baseball team owner Charles A. Comiskey wears a fedora hat." He's the tall guy in rear center, instantly recognizable when you know where to look (and from Cracker Jack photo).
The site is very famous as part of the long and bloody railroad war between two companies starting around 1880, where both sides hired gunslingers, including Bat Masterson and Doc Holliday. The Hanging Bridge, I thought, might have been used for...hangings...but instead it was a unique feat of engineering that could actually carry trains across the river at a place where there was no room for tracks on one side.
There's another quite different photo from the same day, also with the Sox, a little closer to the bridge, that I have not seen on postcards. The train itself is interesting, for railroad buffs.
Has anyone ever IDed the players in the photo, such as Ed Walsh, Doc White, Chick Gandil and others? Can you?
http://www.net54baseball.com/attachm...1&d=1394830361