Mrs. Ella Kinney lived in Taylorville, a city in Christian County of central Illinois.

Taylorville is south of Springfield, and about 80 miles southwest of Champaign, Illinois.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylorville,_Illinois

In January of 1902, Mrs. Kinney received an interesting postcard from Asheville, North Carolina.

Asheville, at the confluence of rivers in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina, is renowned for its architecture and cultural richness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asheville,_North_Carolina

The sender is not identified, but we may assume that Mrs. Kinney recognized the writer.

The face of the postcard is a photograph of railroad lines through the Appalachian foothills near Asheville, North Carolina.

It is an interesting picture of the growth of the railroad.

The railroad transformed American life, and the network of rail lines, stations, bridges, and depots were the grandest public works that the nation had ever seen.

The construction of bridges and tunnels was expensive and time-consuming, so many early railroad lines followed the contours of the landscape -even if it meant abandoning a straight line to the destination.

 At Round Knob, in the mountains of western North Carolina, one can see the twisting rail line as it zig-zags across the area.

The photograph is labeled, “Round Knob – Railroad at 17 points.”

The photograph was made by M. Taylor Rogers of Asheville, and the image was copyrighted in 1900.

Beside the photograph is a printed legend: “Greetings from Asheville, N. C. “

The undivided back had no place for a message, and the sender did not inscribe any words on the face.

Mrs. Kinney seems to have been pleased by the greeting a it was preserved in decent condition throughout her life.

(Some errant ink marks from the post journey, and some marks of foxing, were ameliorated digitally.)

One hopes that Mrs. Kinney and her unidentified friend maintained a postcard correspondence for many years.