With its embossed image of James J. Hill on the cover, this menu is a little fancier than yesterday’s. However, the meal offerings inside are substantially the same. Although it might have been used on a transcontinental train, it was more likely meant for a shorter-distance train while larger, more colorful menus would have been used on the Empire Builder or (before it was discontinued due to the Depression) Oriental Limited.
Click image to download a 0.9-MB PDF of this menu.
Great Northern treated the memory of its founder, James J. Hill, with the same reverence that Apple remembers Steven Jobs today. It is likely that every president the Great Northern had after Hill himself had met Hill at some time in their lives. GN’s penultimate president, Frank Gavin, began work on the railroad in 1897. Its last president, John Budd, was only 8 years old when Hill died, but his father, Ralph Budd, had been Hill’s apprentice and designated successor, so it seems likely that young Budd would have met Hill a time or two.