I was attracted to this postcard because I recognized the location. The card says “the Three Sisters from the west,” but it doesn’t mention that the lake in the foreground is Scott Lake, which is more northwest than west of the Three Sisters. Scott Lake is really three lakes strung together by narrow channels; the picture shows the southern-most lake.

Click image to download a 161-KB PDF of this postcard.

About ten years ago, I took the photo below, which looks very similar to the postcard except it was summer instead of winter and more trees have grown up in the foreground. The snow in the postcard makes me wonder how the photographer managed to get to this location in winter.

The lake is just off Oregon highway 242, also known as the McKenzie Pass Highway (and originally numbered 28 until 1952, then 126 until 1962). This highway opened in 1924 but photographic evidence shows it wasn’t fully paved until after 1930, and probably well after. The state has always had a policy of closing the highway with the first snows and reopening it only when the snows are mostly gone. In 1925, for example, the highway closed on December 10 and didn’t reopen again until April 29.

This postcard has a white border, dating it to the 1920s. Getting to the lake in winter would require a 10-mile slog through the snow with a 3,000-foot elevation gain. Few people could do that on either skis or snowshoes, and why bother when photos taken in the summer would be just as impressive? Unfortunately, the postcard doesn’t say who took the original black-and-white photo, but whoever it was must have been in excellent shape.