Ralph Stenzel has been fascinated with Galveston County history for years and has written a few books on some of the county’s historical spots.

The latest publication is a bit different as it looks at Texas City’s history through postcard printing.

About 15 years ago, Stenzel, who is the mayor of Santa Fe and the vice chairman of the Galveston County Historical Commission, started collecting postcards from the various cities in the county. He was surprised at how many Texas City post card printing results there were.

“I didn’t know there were so many out there,” he said. “There are 322 cards featured in the book and I found six more after publication.”

Stenzel told friend Jesse Ponce about the collection of cards he had, and the idea to feature them in a book to be published in time for the city’s 100th birthday this year was born.

“He saw how interested I was in the Texas City postcards and how much print postcard work was done, said we needed to do a book together,” Stenzel said of Ponce, the former president of the Texas City Historical Association and local historian who collected much of the information featured on historical markers throughout Texas City.

Ponce died in 2010 just as he and Stenzel were talking about getting the book together. His passing is what convinced Stenzel the book needed to be done.

For some, it might be unusual that a city like Texas City, that isn’t a major tourist draw, would have so many postcards. Stenzel credits the wealth of the cards to the military encampments that were in Texas City in the early 1900s and the 1947 Texas City Disaster.

“If it weren’t for the military and the explosions, there wouldn’t be so many postcards,” he said.

The collection in the book begins with card printing done in 1893 and up through the end of World War II.

Generic postcards that bear no resemblance to Texas City at all are featured in the book. A few have mountains in the background or apple tree lined roadways with the city’s name printed at the bottom.

A lot of the collection are “real picture postcards,” which are images people would take themselves and turn them into postcards to mail, Stenzel said. Some of the real picture postcards are those from the 1947 Disaster as well as from the Texas City Dike.

Since their conception in 1840, postcards have played an important role in the way people communicate, not only socially but also for business.

The first and most known use of postcards started when better machinery was built and photographs were added to them, thus giving people the chance to share with loved ones the places the visited during business or pleasure trips. But there was something ackward about the first postcards, contrary to the ones you know today, those didn’t had a space to write on. You could only add a stamp and the recipient’s address. Nothing else.

It was until 1907 that the first divided postcards appeared. They came mostly from Germany and they were just like the ones you know today: a line diving the backside right on the middle allowing the sender to write a short message on the right while setting up the stamp and the recipients information on the left one.

So, we reached the point when also photochrome (postcards with photographs) appeared on the market. It’s what is know as modern era for postcards. These lead to postcard use for business. Owners noticed that it was easy to send a postcard with logo or promoting a sale or a specific product.  All they needed to know was to  whom they wanted to send them. Then wait for people to come.

But that’s a way that will get you results in a moderated period of time. But there’s another way that will allow you to get faster results, and that is, to add something on the postcard that will make people come to you, a reason, let’s say, a survey that will give the customer a certain percentage of discount when returned to the stored filled. Or simple make the postcard turn into a discount card (maybe not all the card, you can set a specific part of it to be ripped or cut).

Another idea is to make the customer bring the card back and get an item free if another is purchased. This will serve you in two ways: 

a. You’ll get a faster response from the people you sent it to.

b. You’ll be able to measure how good the strategy worked for your business (see how many cards you got back vrs the ones that were sent).

So, as you can see, business cards are a powerful and cheap tool to use on your business regardless of what you do.