Valley of the Sun is a booster name for the Phoenix area. The sun part is right, but it never seemed like it was in a valley to me. In any case, this 28-page brochure is from 1950. In case … Continue reading
Category Archives: Santa Fe
How did Fred Harvey service at its Grand Canyon hotels differ from aboard Santa Fe trains? We have an answer thanks to the New York Public Library, which has menus from the El Tovar Hotel from 1921, 1949, and 1953, … Continue reading
This 1941 flyer, which came as an insert to the Grand Canyon Outings booklet, describes lodging, activities, trips, and all-expense tours in Grand Canyon National Park. The flyer includes seven different one-, two-, and three-day tours of the Grand Canyon, … Continue reading
This 1941 booklet is about the same size, uses the same paper, and employes the same red tinting of black-and-white photographs as the California Picture Book. The red works only a little better than in the California book, and probably … Continue reading
This 1938 Santa Fe booklet is not nearly as elegant as Union Pacific’s travel booklets of that era. The paper is thinner, about the same as Life magazine, and the black-and-white photos aren’t quite as crisp as in the UP … Continue reading
The description on the back of this postcard says “Santa Fe streamliner ascending Raton Pass, New Mexico.” At more than 7,600 feet, Raton Pass was the highest point on the Santa Fe Railroad. Since the pass is almost exactly on … Continue reading
In the 1880s, the Santa Fe reached Los Angeles by building a line through Cajon Pass over the mountains that separate Barstow from San Bernardino and Los Angeles. The pass actually separates the San Gabriel Mountains on the northwest from … Continue reading
In 1926, the Chief replaced the California Limited as Santa Fe’s premiere train, with a faster schedule, extra fare, and, of course, an all-Pullman consist. The Indian images used to promote the train later inspired the warbonnet paint scheme used … Continue reading
The California Limited began operating as Santa Fe’s premiere train in 1892 and continued on the timetable until 1954–though superseded as the railway’s top train by the Chief in 1926. The California Limited was an all-Pullman seven-car train aimed at … Continue reading
This note pad, with its overt advertisement for Santa Fe passenger trains, could almost be mistaken for on-board stationery. But the printing on the next sheet of the note pad is faintly visible in the scan. The railway probably distributed … Continue reading