Saguaro Cactus Menu

We’ve seen menus like this before featuring cover illustrations of such things as redwoods, the Monterey coast, Mount Shasta, and prickly pear cactus, among others. This one shows the more famous saguaro cactus.

Click image to download a 1.1-MB PDF of this menu.

While all the other menus in this series that I’ve seen are from 1937, this one is from 1938. None of them seem to mention the name of the train they were used on, suggesting they were probably used on secondary trains such as the Pacific Limited, Californian, or Argonaut.

This particular dinner menu offers table d’hôte meals with halibut, lamb casserole, braised beef, fried chicken, or sirloin or tenderloin steak, all with soup, vegetables, salad, bread, beverage, and dessert. The halibut was 90 cents (about $16 in today’s money); the steak $1.50 (about $27 today). The a la carte side had a sirloin steak for $1.50 (was it bigger than the one that came with a complete meal?), lamb chops, and a variety of other entrées and side dishes.


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