L. W. Currey, Inc.

YOSEMITE PARK & CURRY CO. Fifteen genuine photographs 50¢ 50¢ Yosemite National Park California [card mailing folder title]. Yosemite Nat'l. Park, California: Yosemite Park and Curry Co., n.d. [1930s]. 15 small photographic prints, 7 x 11.5 cm (2 3/4 x 4 1/2 inches), enclosed in a card mailing folder printed in green, gray and black. Kodak-sized commercial prints, each titled in the negative, most signed "Sawyers," made for the Yosemite Park and Curry Company. Produced after 1933 as one image shows the Wawona Road tunnel, but at least several of the photographs were taken in the 1920s. "Sawyers" is probably the photo service founded by Edwin Eugene Mayer who "worked as a pharmacist at Owl Drug store in downtown Portland, Oregon, after serving in the U.S. Army in World War I. He built up a photofinishing business there, and bought into Sawyer's Photo Finishing Service in 1919 ... The company [incorporated and renamed Sawyer Service, Inc.] was producing photographic postcards and album sets as souvenirs by 1926 ... Later, photographic greeting cards were added to the Sawyer's product line, marketed to major department stores. Sawyer's was the nation's largest producer of scenic postcards in the 1920s and the future View-Master system [developed by Sawyer's and introduced in 1939] eventually became an extension of the two-dimensional cards" (Wikipedia). The folder is a bit worn; the photographic prints are fine. (#166637).