And You Thought You Knew the GenWeb Archives!

I had no idea until a friend forwarded an email that the GenWeb Archives includes "Penny Postcards," old postcards organized by state and county. They have cards from everywhere, and the Midwest holdings are ample.

It would appear that there are at least two kinds of postcards represented: the carefully airbrushed and tinted ones, and the (more individual and less overtly boosterish?) black-and-white images. It's these less boosterish ones that can almost stop my heart -- it really is like a Jack Finney story, a moment frozen in time, like this one from Three Oaks, Berrien County, Michigan.

You may find these little images at the end of a quest, but it could also be the beginning -- since it's often not clear just when they were taken, but at a guess I'd say most of them are around a century old.