Hometown Index Page

There are times when it seems to us that one hobby tends to lead us into another, and so it is with our postcard collection. This started out as Sandy’s project when she found several postcards depicting early scenes in Estherville, then I joined in the search since my work with family history also tends to include history surrounding the towns, counties, and states that we found our ancestors living in and around. Regardless of how it started, this hobby has grown beyond its original scope; we hope you enjoy our collection.

Before continuing on with the cards themselves we are now offering an opportunity for you to own a reproduction of those you would like to add to a collection of your own. We realize that anyone visiting this site can save the images for their use, but the file you save includes our watermark and since we reduce the image size to save file space on our server the image may not print clearly when expanded to the original size. We have had requests for this service so have developed a reprint page and invite you to visit this page for full details on this service.

Estherville, Iowa

Estherville is the small rural community where Sandy and I grew up. It is the county seat of Emmet County in Northwest Iowa. Like so many small towns there is a central square with the library and courthouse. Many of the buildings in the downtown area remain much the same as when they were built around the turn of the century. This page will feature images and links to pages about our hometown. If you can help us with details about the images or our descriptions please send e-mail, we would appreciate hearing from you.

Most of the images you see here are postcards we have collected over the past few years. We will try to add to the collection from time to time so be sure to stop back to see what is new. In an effort to reduce your loading time we have broken the collection up into sub catagories. We have cross referenced all the pages so you can get back here easily.

We have presented each of the images in a small format to make the pages quick to load. You can click on the small image to open a new window and see the card in greater detail. There is a short description of the larger image, which may be slow to download. You can close each window leaving you where you started.

One last word, occassionally we will use the term RPPC in reference to the postcard. This abbreviation stands for "Real Picture Post Card" and is often used on eBay and other on-line auction services to describe the cards that are produced by a photographic process, generally these are black and white and may be faded or yellowed a bit. We do try to clean the images up a bit so they are clear but try not to change them too much.

We assume that these images are all in the public domain. And although we do not claim any copyrights to the postcards themselves we do assert our copyright privliges to the presentation of the images and our accompaning text. If you wish to use any of this material for other than personal use please send us e-mail for our consideration of your request. We have a substantial investment in this collection and we do not feel it is appropriate to steal these images for financial gain on your part.

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