San Xavier Mission ~ Tucson, Arizona c1902 – We drove by the San Xavier Mission, just outside of Tucson, Arizona, as we were traveling on our way to the Tubac Golf Resort & Spa.  Unfortunately, or schedule didn’t permit us time to stop, but we thought we would share this wonderful photocrom postcard from the Library of Congress.

Photochrom prints, also called Aäc, are ink-based images produced through “the direct photographic transfer of an original negative onto litho and chromographic printing plates.” Hans Jakob Schmid (1856-1924), who worked for the Swiss firm Orell Füssli, invented the technique in the 1880s. Füssli published the prints through a company with the imprint Photochrom Zürich, later Photoglob Zürich. Other companies that licensed the process starting in the mid 1890s included the Detroit Photographic Company (later Detroit Publishing Company) in the United States and the Photochrom Company in London, England. (via Library of Congress)

There are over 6,000 of these travel postcards cataloged at the Library of Congress website.  Simply click the link above to begin exploring.

Enjoy! 🙂