Choosing a Cover

Oh the pressure, the deliberation, the agonizing decisions!!! But at some point it must be done. We must choose from all our fabulous photos some possible cover contenders. There are some rules, restrictions and guidelines for acceptable cover images. And of course there is our opinion and our publisher’s opinion. We hope they turn out to be the same.

At first there was a great logging photo that caught our eye. Unfortunately, we discovered the picture was NOT from Mount Vernon. Turns out that was a blessing in disguise. We had to look harder and think more. After all, this is the Northwest. Logging certainly wasn’t unique to Mount Vernon. So what is unique to Mount Vernon? Today people would probably say “tulips”. Right? True, but that wasn’t the case in the early days. However the success of tulip growing can give us hints to the past—fertile farm lands, crops, seeds, cows… Did you know that Mount Vernon used to be called “Milk City”? It was a combination of all the fine dairy farms and the multiple milk condenseries. As a matter of fact, Mount Vernon was home to the third ever condensery built by Carnation in 1907! At that time evaporated milk wasn’t simply used for baking here and there, it was considered the wave of the future!

To us, Milk City seems very unique and interesting. That is why this is our top choice for cover photo (printed with permission from the John Kamb collection):

We’ll see if it makes the cut.