West Visits Southern Arizona

This issue of West isn’t dated, but it was published in time to advertise the December 15 inauguration of the streamlined Arizona Limited, which would place it near the end of 1940. To promote the train, the periodical advertises wintertime guest ranches, though it doesn’t specifically mention any of them by name.

Click image to download a 3.7-MB PDF of this issue of West.

The back cover also includes photos of Carlsbad Caverns; Juarez, Mexico, where “you’ll hear gay music, see many a fascinating sight”; and the Hotel Playa de Cortés, “a short trip by train across the border from Tucson.” The trip was actually more than 15 hours and the train arrived in Guaymas, where the hotel was located, at 2:30 in the morning. The brochure also has an interior photo of the lounge car of the Californian, SP’s secondary train from Chicago to Los Angeles, showing that even a secondary train would have a comfortable, if plain, lounge.


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