Endangered Elsewhere - Mystery Photo 1

As I continue to work on gathering information in preparation for a few months of East Durham, I'm looking for a few low-work posts to put up. This week - photos that tried to pass as Durham, but aren't.

These are generally photos I've found in collections of otherwise Durham photos, but I feel fairly confident are not Durham. In a new test of your Mystery Photo prowess, I'm going to see if you can ID photos from probably-elsewhere.

Note that I'm happy to be proven wrong and have someone ID them as Durham - but you need to make a pretty strong case. I've covered a lot of territory in Durham, and they aren't somewhere easy or obvious.

First up, a photo from the Alford family of East Durham. For someone familiar with the name on the sign - "Esteps Cafe" from some other locale, this may be an easy one - but I don't know it:

Comments

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 10/18/2010 - 11:59am

If it will be of any help, this photo likely dates from the '30s -note Shirley Temple hairdo and big ribbon. First glance looks somewhat like the corner of Angier and Driver but I'm sure you have already eliminated that. Happy hunting.

Submitted by kris (not verified) on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 3:02am

Bingo. Cumberland Gap, TN. Corner of Brooklyn and Colwyn.

Submitted by Gary (not verified) on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 3:06am

Whoa. Color me impressed - how did you figure that out?

GK

Submitted by kris (not verified) on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 3:12am

Sorry, that URL isn't legible. The bit at the end should expand to "District_Cumberland_Gap_TN"

Submitted by Gary (not verified) on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 3:21am

Very nice! Coming up...

GK

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 6:58am

OK, I'm impressed with Kris.
That's some mad Google skills!

So, does anyone know that best way to label old photos? I have a huge box of them that I want to get ID"d before there's no one left who can remember them, but I don't want to damage them by using the wrong labeling tools.

Submitted by kris (not verified) on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 3:22pm

I would digitize the photos and keep the label information in a file, then backup the files and preserve the original photos unmarked.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 4:28pm

Nice job Kris!

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 10/19/2010 - 9:24pm

Kris, appreciate the response and idea, but after my dad's fiasco with digitalizing stuff 20 years ago that are now inaccessible to us due to tech changes, we just want to label the originals and keep it as low tech and accessible as when they were taken 80+ years ago. :)

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