This 1909 booklet was apparently written to entice eastern visitors to the San Diego and San Francisco fairs that celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal to make their return trips via the Northern Pacific rather than the more direct Overland, Santa Fe, or Golden State routes. The 40 or so pages of text are attributed to geographer Olin Wheeler, who also wrote Northern Pacific’s Wonderland series of travel booklets.

Click image to download a 17.1-MB PDF of this 68-page booklet.

Wheeler describes a journey beginning in San Diego up the coastline to the Bay Area then up the Shasta Route over Siskiyou Pass. As such, the first 17 pages focus on Southern Pacific lines, not Northern Pacific. Northern Pacific was always a little closer to the Southern Pacific than was the Great Northern, which built its own line into California while NP exchanged freight with SP at Portland. (In my fantasy world, NP merged with SP, GN with Santa Fe, and UP with Milwaukee Road to create three great western railroads instead of the two we have today.)

The chapter starting on the page numbered 22 is titled “The Northern Pacific,” but the next several pages actually describe the Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway, which was half-owned by the NP. The traveler doesn’t climb aboard an NP train until the last paragraph on page 27, going from Portland to Seattle.

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It is not until page 35, in Wheeler’s account, that the traveler leaves Seattle on what would have been the North Coast Limited. The next 21 pages cover a trip to and through Yellowstone. This is apparently the terminus of the trip, although the book does include, without comment, one scene in the North Dakota badlands.

Page 59 advertises other publications available from Northern Pacific. Most are free or inexpensive, but one, Wild Flowers from Yellowstone, was 25 cents, or about $12.50 in today’s money. This included a dozen real pressed flowers. A digital copy of this booklet is available from archive.org. The second-most expensive item on the list was a “Panoramic Yellowstone Park Picture,” which is probably similar to this 1897 brochure on archive.org.

In an example of what I consider to be poor planning, two whole pages are blank in the back of the book. This is in addition to the inside covers, which are also blank. NP could have saved a little money by printing text on the inside covers and leaving no blank pages or by filling those four blank pages with photos and text.