Despite yesterday’s booklet, Missouri Pacific didn’t actually go to California. But it did go to Colorado, or at least, Pueblo, Colorado, from whence travelers could reach most of the rest of the state on MP’s former vassal railroad, the Rio Grande.
Click image to download a 20.7-MB PDF of this 52-page booklet (including fold-out map).
The booklet describes a guided tour lasting thirteen days (including time spent traveling from and to St. Louis or Kansas City) that took place four times in the summer of 1928: starting June 23, July 14, August 11, and August 25. With a lower berth from St. Louis, the all-expense tour cost about $186 (about $2,700 today). The tour included visits to the San Isabel National Forest, Pikes Peak, Denver, two full days in Rocky Mountain Park, Grand Lake, and Idaho Springs (with its “famous Radio-Active Mineral Cave Baths”), but missed the Royal Gorge and other sites much west of the Front Range.
As an alternative, the booklet also describes three “go-as-you-please” (i.e., unguided) all-expense tours. These lasted nine, ten, and thirteen days and followed pretty much the same itinerary as the guided tour, mainly varying the amount of time spent at Rocky Mountain Park. From St. Louis with a lower berth the thirteen-day tour cost $186 (about $2,700 today), the ten-day tour cost $161 (about $2,300 today), while the nine-day tour was $149 (about $2,150 today).