Norfolk, Virginia / Fordson Plant / Mt. Lowe (Mountain Climbing in California) / California Ostrich Farm

The original catalog description provided by the Ford Motor Company reads as follows: a. Ferry slip to Portsmouth; automobile and street car traffic. “First National Bank of Commerce.” “Looking west on Main Street.” “Atlantic Avenue Post Office and Board of Trade in background.” “Main Street, East.” “Granby Street.” Marketing geese. “The largest coal pier in the world.” Railroad coal cars. “Colonial Avenue, a prominent residential street.” “Looking toward the residential section from Ghent Bridge.” Automobile, streetcar and pedestrian traffic. “Norfolk has a fine harbor, deep and easily accessible, and through it pass immense cargoes of cotton, peanuts, oysters, coal, lumber, grain, fruit, and other products.” “How Norfolk keeps down the high cost of living-bringing home a live bird.” Man holds a live turkey. “Large shipments of cotton pass through the port of Norfolk and immense cotton warehouses line the docks. This picture shows how the cotton is weighed.” Cotton bales on docks, workers weighing cotton. [1916] b. Views of the factory grounds and buildings at tractor plant. [1917] c. Mountain slopes, observation post; tourists throughout the following: “Echo Mountain is the summit of the incline railway and here we boarded trolley cars for a wonderfully scenic ride to Alpine Tavern.” Signs, ‘Losflores Canyon,’ ‘Sentinel Rock,’ ‘Millards Canyon,’ and ‘Circular Bridge,’ with views of each. “And now we’re forced to walk for there is no comfortable trolley to finish the remaining 2½ miles to the summit.” “The most difficult climbing we negotiated with the assistance of a life line.” “Careful here, for a slip would mean a drop of hundreds of feet.” “Nearing the end of the trail we found ice and snow in abundance and the going was proportionately hard.” “The top.” Mountain tops above the clouds. [1916] d. California Ostrich Farm, Part One. “500 birds inhabit the farm. Due to the fickleness of dame fashion, ostrich plumes no longer grace milady’s bonnet; consequently the ostrich is forced to appear in vaudeville in order to be self-supporting.” Many ostrich moving around in a corral. “When the mess call sounds in the big corral.” Ostrich gather around the feed wagon. “Eat and grow thin’ is the motto of the ostrich, for they eat as long as the food lasts, consuming as much as a horse or an ox.” Feeding at a trough. “Are you fond of oranges? Then you probably wouldn’t care to be an ostrich, for note his method of putting them down. No fletcherizing here.” Man feeding whole oranges to ostriches. [1916]