3- Vtg 1940 Switzerland of America Ouray Silverton Durango CO Tru-Vue 3D Stereo

Description

3- Vtg 1940 Switzerland of America Ouray Silverton Durango CO Tru-Vue 3D Stereo
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I have collected 3D photo memorabilia for 30+ years and it's time that I let some of my prized collectibles go.
This is a rare complete set of three vintage Tru-Vue film strip reels of 3D pictures taken of the beautiful sites between Ouray, Silverton, Durango, and the San Juan Countryside in Colorado with all 3 film strips in matching red & silver boxes. Each film strip reel contains 14 different 3D stereo images for viewing within a Tru-Vue viewer stereoscope (not included). See this historic city and country as it once was in these wonderful 3D photos from 75+ years ago! You'll get a kick out of the vintage 1940s touring ride from whence you see these views. Today these reels are very interesting historic stuff, and all in eye-popping 3D! Complete sets almost never show up leaving collectors to find each film strip one at a time - this one in particular; In 20 years of collecting Tru-Vues, this is the first time I've had a complete second set.
This set contains:
729 Switzerland of America #1 (Ouray to Silverton, Colorado)
730 Switzerland of America #2 (Silverton to Durango, Colorado)
731 Switzerland of America #3 (San Juan Countryside, Colorado)
Condition:
The film strip reels...
are all in excellent condition and all are in their original red and silver boxes with the original cardboard inserts! I have personally gone through each film strip reel with white gloves on and inspected every frame and every film cog. All are perfect guaranteed! I would suggest when viewing these rare films (and all other Tru-Vue films), to pull them slowly through the viewer rather than using the advance lever. This is how the cogs get torn.
All Three boxes...
have slight shelf wear which is to be expected after 75 years, but all flaps are present and there is no writing, tears, or crushes anywhere on the boxes. Each reel is in its original cardboard sleeve. The thing that I adore about this set, is each has an original camera store sticker on the bottom of it (Albert C. Butzen, Detroit, MI) Coincidentally, the man who's collection this came from was a Detroit resident. These stickers add provinance to the reels, and if the new owner doesnt agree, they are easily removed. I have tried my best to photograph every aspect of the boxes and film strips.
Please check my pictures out and if you have any questions, please email!  Packaging on these will be very secure!
Thanks for looking!
PLEASE CHECK OUT MY OTHER LISTINGS FOR MORE 3D STEREO VIEWERS, VIEWS, and CAMERAS
About Switzerland of America
:
Back in the 1870s, when American travelers imagined the West, they didn’t picture the desolate plains and cactus-strewn mesas so beloved by John Ford. They thought of somewhere far more sedate and manicured—a place, in fact, that looked surprisingly like Switzerland. For the restless city slickers of the Gilded Age, the dream destination was Colorado, where the high valleys of the Rocky Mountains, adorned with glacial lakes, meadows and forests as if by an artist’s hand, were reported to be the New World’s answer to the Alps. This unlikely connection with Europe’s most romantic landscape was first conjured in 1869 by a PR-savvy journalist named Samuel Bowles, whose guidebook to Colorado, The Switzerland of America, extolled the natural delights of the territory just as the first railway lines were opening to Denver. Colorado was a natural Eden, Bowles burbled, where “great fountains of health in pure, dry and stimulating air” lay in wait for Americans desperate to escape the polluted Eastern cities. Artists such as Albert Bierstadt depicted the landscape with a celestial glow, confirming the belief that the West had been crafted by a divine hand, and as worthy of national pride as the Parthenon or Pyramids.
Soon travelers began arriving from New York, Boston and Philadelphia in walnut-paneled Pullman train coaches, thrilled to stay in the Swiss-style hotels of resort towns like Colorado Springs, where they could “take the waters,” relax, flirt and enjoy the idyllic mountain views. Pikes Peak became America’s Matterhorn, Longs Peak our answer to Mont Blanc, and the chic resorts at Manitou Springs evoked glamorous European spas. (So many rich invalids arrived in the resort that the common greeting between strangers became, “What is your complaint, sir?”) These pioneer tourists were far more interested in the scenery than local culture: One visitor was delighted to report, “So surrounded are you by snowy summits that you can easily forget you are in Colorado.”
The reality was that Colorado (which was a territory from 1861 to 1876, then entered the Union as a state) was still very much a raw frontier, which adds a surreal element when reading travelers’ letters and memoirs. Eastern swells found themselves in the raucous saloons of Denver, rubbing shoulders with gold miners, trappers and Ute Indians, while hard-bitten mountain men wandered the same “alpine” trails as genteel sightseers. So much of the Rockies had yet to be explored that one governor boasted he would name a new peak after every traveler who arrived. And the repeated insistence on European connections, to distract from rougher social elements, could border on the fantastical. Boulder, for example, was “the Athens of Colorado.” Local wits began referring to Switzerland as “the Colorado of Europe.”
About Tru-Vue from the UK Viewmaster website:
TRU-VUE Inc., Rock Island, Illinois USA manufactured the viewers and over 400 different 3D film reels. The company was founded in 1931 and after
the 1933 "Century of Progress Exposition" in Chicago grew and flourished through the 1930's and 40's. The original viewers used 35mm filmstrips,
generally containing 14 stereo views, which were pulled through the viewer using a lever (visible at the bottom of the left-hand photograph below). In
1949 Tru-Vue sold over a million reels of film!.  The quality of the 3D presented is generally very good, although the films need to be handled carefully.
Film-strips and viewers were made between 1933 and 1952. Ultimately the Tru-Vue company was acquired by Sawyers View-Master in 1952, who
wanted the rights to Disney licences held by the company.
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