Unlike most menus in this series with black-and-white photos on the covers, this one’s cover photo didn’t wrap around to the back. Instead, the front cover shows a scene outside of Mexico City while the back cover photo shows a basket market in Guadalajara.
Click image to download a 2.1-MB PDF of this menu.
Both photos say that the cities are “reached by our West Coast of Mexico Route.” However, Southern Pacific of Mexico only went as far as Guadalajara, 1,095 miles south of the Mexican border at Nogales, Arizona. From there, passengers to Mexico City would take the Mexican Government Railway another 381 miles.
Despite the Mexican emphasis, this menu was used on a train from Oakland to Portland, as it was for members of the AAHMES Temple (which is in Livermore, California) heading to a July 1936 convention of the Ancient Egyptian Arabic Order Nobles Mystic Shrine (Shriners) in Seattle. Though marked for the convention, the menu has prices ranging from 50¢ (about $9 today) for a continental breakfast to 90¢ (about $16 today) for a full breakfast.