As the last hours of 2024 fade away, I’m closing out the year with a look at another vintage postcard of Snoqualmie Falls and the former Snoqualmie Falls Lodge known today at The Salish Lodge and Spa. This unique view was captured by a Tacoma-based photographer who spent decades involved with Washington state photography.
SNOQUALMIE FALLS AND LODGE POSTCARD – CT-791
The front of this postcard includes a look at the 268-foot Snoqualmie Falls and the former Snoqualmie Falls Lodge. The 4,167-foot Mount Si looms in the distance under a cloud-filled sky.
If you look carefully at the left side of the card, you’ll notice a covered viewing area what was constructed in 1967. It’s the same covered area that can be briefly seen in Twin Peaks during establishing shots of The Great Northern Hotel. The viewing area was demolished and the entire Snoqualmie Falls Park was redesigned between September to December 2009.
Since I don’t have a helicopter or airplane, I am unable to capture the same view of Snoqualmie Falls. I turned to Google Earth which offered a similar view. The Snoqualmie Falls lodge had not been renovated at the time the postcard image was taken.
By 1988, the Lodge had been remodeled as a 91-luxury room hotel and renamed as The Salish Lodge. In 1996, it was renamed again to The Salish Lodge and Spa after a world-class spa was added to the property.
The card was distributed by Smith-Western Co. in Tacoma, Washington who still makes souvenirs for tourist attractions today. The Plastichrome card has a catalog number of CT-791.
According to a postcard collecting website, Colourpicture Publishers, Inc. was a “prominent publisher and printer of linen view cards in the United States. From 1938 to 1969, the company was based in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts. In the 1950s, it expanded its offerings to include photochromes and small spiral-bound picture booklets under the trade name Plastichrome.”
The description on the back of the card reads:
SNOQUALMIE FALLS AND LODGE
Located just off U.S. Highway 10, 26 miles east of Seattle, Washington. The combination of a world-famous dining place overlooking a 268-foot waterfall is one of the major tourist and dining attractions in Northwest Washington. The falls is fed by perpetual snow and ice fields in the high Cascades. Often a beautiful rainbow is formed by the afternoon sun shining on the spray and mist near the foot of the falls and is, indeed, a photographer’s delight! Color by Bernie McNeil
WHO IS PHOTOGRAPHER BERNIE MCNEIL?
The News Tribune published a brief story on November 27, 1990 about a postcard with a photo by Bernie McNeil of the Lake Washington Floating Bridge. The article mentioned that Smith-Western was reordering 15,000 cards of the photo McNeil took in the 1970s. This was the first clue to identify the photographer.
The newspaper issued a correction the next day because they incorrectly identified McNeil’s place of employment as The Camera Shop, not Washington Camera Mart where he worked for decades.
If you notice the Floating Bridge card presented in the same style as the Snoqualmie Falls and Lodge card in this article. This means the card could have been printed around 1990 yet the photo is most likely from the late 1960s to the early 1970s as Bernie died in 1974.
Washington Camera Mart located opened around 1946 as one of the earliest advertisements I found was in The News Tribune on October 12 that year.
A few years later, the store ran a full page advertisement which included a photo of co-owners McNeil (upper right corner) and Art Bachelor. Their store was found at the corner of 11th and Pacific Avenues inside the 18-story Washington building.
Built in 1925, the building was the tallest building in Tacoma and the second tallest in the Pacific Northwest just behind the Smith Building in downtown Seattle. The building was also home to the Scandinavian American Bank which was preserved when the entire building was renovated to a 156-unit multifamily development named The Astor in 2020.
Bernard “Bernie” McNeil passed on Saturday, July 20, 1974 at the age of 60. Born in Red Wing, Minnesota, he served in the United States Army during the Second World War. He was a member of the Tacoma Rotary Club, Tacoma Elks, Musicians Union, Bellarmine Boosters and Catholic Church. It appears he worked at Washington Camera Mart from the time he returned from the war through the time of his death.
At some point, he married a woman named Billie who may have passed on July 19, 1980 at the age of 70. She was born in Spring Valley, Wisconsin and moved to Tacoma in 1945. She was a waitress at Johnny’s Dock and Harbor Lights restaurant and was a member of St. Leo’s Catholic Church. Her obituary doesn’t mention any survivors but my gut tells me this was Bernie’s wife.
More than 50 years after his death, it’s great sharing an awesome photo of the majestic falls and sharing some history about a kindred spirit in photography.
Download high-resolution images of this and other postcards from the Real Twin Peaks of Washington state on my Flickr account.
