One February day in 1913, Hugo Barrett, a local farmer, dropped off a postcard at the Merced Falls Post Office in the Yosemite Lumber Company. It had a simple message to his wife, Emma Alice, who was visiting her sister in San Francisco: “Dear Alice, you had better stay down until Sunday anyway. Everything is OK here.” Hugo missed his bride and was excited to share with her a postcard image of something that had made Merced Falls, once again, the industrial center of Merced County.