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Thanks to the Private Mailing Card Act of 1898, which allowed private publishers to produce postcards, Americans started to send friends and loved ones stunning color photos with a one cent stamp (the letter rate at the time was two cents). As a result, Photochrom postcards of the Grand Canyon, Manhattan, even Native American settlements, started suddenly being sold and sent in vast quantities all around the country.
Many of these images were sold by the upstart Detroit Publishing Company and taken by William Henry Jackson, a Civil War vet who loved watercoloring and photography.