A Guest Post by Fred Coldwell

You might be surprised that our two favorite experts on Pendleton blankets, Fred Coldwell and Barry Friedman, do not actually work for Pendleton. Fred is a private collector of National Park blankets, and has spent time in the Pendleton archives to research his finds and answer his questions. Fred has also given talks at Pendleton HQ and at several store openings, where he displays rarities from his vast collection and shares his knowledge. He wrote to us about a new, rare find, and we asked if he would share it with our readers. Enjoy! — Editor

Pendleton has been weaving national park blankets for over 100 years, beginning in September, 1916 with its Glacier Park followed by the Yellowstone Park in 1923, the Zion Park in September, 1926, and the Grand Canyon in November, 1926. 

As a prelude to our unusual Grand Canyon blanket, we’ll first revisit the first Zion Park blanket. It came in six body colors: straw, drab, white, camel hair, rose, and delft blue. Three rows of tri-color character stripes appear at each end. Only one size was produced, 66" x 80", using pure virgin wool filling on a cotton warp. Felt binding was sewn across both ends, and the Zion Park used the standard Pendleton blanket label for its time because the Zion Park name was found only on a larger cardboard tag stapled to the blanket but long since removed. Here is the first Zion Park blanket:

and its standard Pendleton Copyright 1921 label used from 1921-1930:

Now here is the unusual Grand Canyon blanket:

and its Grand Canyon National Park Blanket label:

The two blankets are nearly identical except that the Grand Canyon has 4 points sewn-in the lower right corner of the center field and has a dedicated Grand Canyon National Park Blanket label with “Reg. U.S. Pat. Off" included under its name. That helps us date this blanket.

Dating via Label

Pendelton filed an application with the U.S. Patent Office on April 28, 1928 to trademark the words “Grand Canyon" as used on its woolen blankets, claiming those words were first used in November 1926. The trademark was granted on September 18, 1928, so the Grand Canyon label on this blanket could not have been used any earlier than that date.

Given some amount of time necessary to prepare new labels which included “Reg. U.S. Pat. Off." on them, I think this unusual Grand Canyon blanket was sold in very late 1928 or within a few years thereafter. Of interest, this national park blanket label lists Pendleton Woolen Mills in Pendleton, Oregon, not Portland, Oregon as in later labels. It is also the only pre-WWII national park blanket label to include the word “National" before “Park" in the blanket’s name.

So why did Pendleton change the name of this blanket from Zion Park to Grand Canyon? I think the reason might be found in Pendleton’s March 21, 1927 Dealer Bulletin, which described the new Zion Park blanket as:

dedicated to that great scenic wonderland in southern Utah which forms the south rim of the Grand Canyon, where nature has been most lavish with her colorful paintbrush. Hence the rich coloring of the blanket in its bright stripes . . .

This description accurately portrays the blanket but misplaces Zion Park, which is not on the south rim of the Grand Canyon but is about 100 miles to the northwest. The national park on the south rim of Grand Canyon is, of course, Grand Canyon National Park. I imagine the Zion Park blanket was quietly renamed the Grand Canyon National Park Blanket to relocate it to south rim in the more popular and better visited national park.

About the Zion 

The Zion Park blanket did not appear in Pendleton’s Wholesale Price list dated August 27, 1927, a mere 5 months later. Instead, it was replaced by a new national park blanket: the Grand Canyon. This new blanket was described as having “bright color character stripes [at] each end" on body colors straw, drab, white, brown (which replaced camel hair), rose, and delft blue.

The last delft blue variation accurately describes this unusual Grand Canyon National Park Blanket pictured above. This Grand Canyon came only in one size, a 66" x 80" single as indicated by its 4 points, and had a virgin wool filling on a cotton wrap with felt bound ends. The 4 points were sewn in brown, a color otherwise not used in this blanket but the darkest available body color listed above for the new Grand Canyon blankets.  

The Zion Park blanket did not reappear until nearly 2 years later, when on March 1, 1929, it was again listed in Pendleton’s Wholesale Price List of that date. But its description wholly changed to a bird (in its center) with Hopi border designs at each end. This second Zion Park blanket can be seen in my earlier blog post describing Zion Park blankets:

A Brief History of the Zion Park Blanket by Fred Coldwell

So far this unusual Grand Canyon Blanket with three tri-color stripes at each end has been found only in delft blue. It will be interesting to see if any other body colors with these three tri-color character stripes surface in the near future.

The colors used in this unusual Grand Canyon blanket were also used on other national park blankets in the late 1920s. The tri-color stripes consisted (from the bottom up) of white/rose/drab (dark green); white/straw/red; and white/rose/drab again, as seen here close up:

These colors were rearranged and used to spectacular effect in one of my favorite Grand Canyon blankets, the rose-bodied broad band version:

This striking vintage Pendleton captures all the beauty of a wet spring explosive bloom of desert wildflowers. It wears the same Grand Canyon label as our featured blanket and also has 4 points in brown. 

One of the joys of collecting vintage Pendleton blankets is that it never gets as old as the blankets themselves because forgotten variations keep coming to light, to our enjoyment and delight. Keep old virgin wool loved! — Fred Coldwell

Pendleton National Park Blankets