More Vacationland Postcards

Heading out to Vacationland is one of my favorite things to do, and vintage postcards from that area always make me smile. Here's a few more from the www.cardcow.com vintage postcard website, which I've come to rely on recently for vintage images. Click on each for a slightly larger image. (And remember, the postcards are for sale on the cardcow.com website!)

Here's one of the old Sandusky Bay Bridge. It's unusual because it shows the center section that could be raised if a ship was passing through. (Today that section is gone, and the abandoned bridge approaches are used for fishing. My wife and I use them for eating our Toft's ice cream!)

The old Sandusky Bay Bridge

Here's a few from the Cedar Point of my youth, showing the Space Spiral (still a favorite of mine) and the much-loved Jungle Larry's Safari Island.

Space Spiral

Jungle Larry's Safari Island

Here's a few more Cedar Point favorites: the Pirate Ride and the Games Building. (When it was almost time to go home, we would linger by the Games Building, getting one last snack and sitting for a while before the ride home, in which we sadly realized it would be another year before we got to Cedar Point again!)

Pirate Ride

Games Building

Tent camping at East Harbor State Park near Lakeside-Marblehead is one of my great childhood family memories – and here's a postcard showing just that. East Harbor was just far enough from Lorain, to be interesting without being a long drive, and the proximity to Lake Erie made it seem like you were in another state – truly on vacation! 

Lastly, 2010 was the last year for Prehistoric Forest near Marblehead (which I talked about back here) and here's a vintage postcard showing their triceratops. (This must be their original one, as the one I encountered during my farewell trip to the attraction didn't look like this.)

Vacationland Postcards

Here's a few more vintage postcards from Vacationland.

This (below) is the original 1929 two-lane Sandusky Bay Bridge (which was later replaced by the Thomas Edison Memorial Bridge that we all know so well). You can still drive on part of it today, since it is still in service as two separate fishing piers. A better blog than mine tells the whole story of this bridge with some great pictures, if you click here. But be sure to come back!

Here's a vintage postcard of downtown Huron. I picked up this postcard at the Wileswood Country Store (remember it?) back in the 1980's. I was going to try and do a 'then and now' treatment, but I believe that most, if not all of this is gone now. I've driven up and down the street here and have been unable to do a positive I. D. on any of the buildings. If I'm ever in a library out there, I'll get the address of that Food Center from an old city directory and see if any of the buildings are still there.

Here's a postcard of a place that is on the way to Prehistoric Forest (which I mentioned a few days ago.) It's Fort Firelands. I've driven by here several times each summer, wondering what it is. Its website reveals that it is actually an RV resort that just happens to have a full-scale replica of a frontier fort as part of the complex. This page of the website has some great vintage photos of the fort as it looked through the years.

Lastly, here's one from downtown Port Clinton of the Island House. According to the 'history' page on its website, it was built in 1886. It's now a condo-tel, with 38 rooms that are individually owned. I love its long-gone triangular sign!

Vacationland

Here's a undated travel brochure from my collection that fits in with my current blog theme of summer fun up here by the lake. It describes the Lake Erie Vacationland region. (I know, I'm straying outside my blog's "Lorain County" theme again!)

Before I picked up this brochure, I thought "Vacationland" was some ad man's recent creation, probably because I had seen signs for the Vacationland Credit Union and assumed it was just some catchy name.

It wasn't until I acquired a copy of Lake Erie Vacationland in Ohio that I learned the name had been around a long time. The book is a reprint of a 1941 travel guide that was part of the Ohio Writers' Program of the Work Projects Administration, designed to give writers, editors and researchers some work during the Great Depression.

The book defines Vacationland in its very first paragraph:

The traveler following State 2 over the monotonous farm land east of Toledo, or US 6 along the lake west of Cleveland, soon enters a region unlike any other in Ohio. It is made up of both land and water. Sandusky Bay is as much a part of it as Lake Erie; two long peninsulas jutting into the lake offer extraordinary surprises; and a few miles to the north are celebrated islands and fishing grounds. The region can be accurately spotted on an Ohio road map. The neat quadrangle formed by drawing straight lines between Vermilion on the east, Norwalk on the south, Toussaint Creek on the west and North Bass Island in Lake Erie embraces all the area known as Lake Erie Vacationland.


Anyway, the Vacationland map (shown at left) is one of those that are a lot of fun to look at, with plenty of tiny cartoon images sprinkled throughout. Unfortunately it is printed on super strength paper slightly thinner than plywood, making it tough to wrangle onto a scanner. I can only imagine trying to navigate with this thing in your car!

But I did manage to scan a few chunks of it, folds and all and piece it together. Here's a portion showing Cedar Point (with no Causeway) and the old Bay Bridge across Sandusky Bay (that preceded the Thomas Edison Bridge). (Click on it so you can navigate around!)

And here is a close-up of another part of the map.

It shows an area that was a favorite of my family, Marblehead and particularly East Harbor State Park. East Harbor had (and has) a great beach and was a good place to set up the old trailer for some camping fun. And after looking at the map, I now know that there is a West Harbor too!

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Incidentally, to visit a terrific blog by the Sandusky Library Archives Research Center dealing with Vacationland and many, many other historical topics, click here. It's got tons of fascinating archival photos and is well worth the visit!