Let the Burlington Show You the West

This 1937 Burlington vacation guide features cover art by Paul Proehl (1887-1965), who I am surprised to realize I haven’t mentioned before as he did work for both Chicago & North Western and Illinois Central. An Illinois native, Proehl received a degree in architecture from the University of Illinois in 1910. Apparently bored with that, he went to art school, probably at the Art Institute, and went to work as an advertising illustrator in 1918. In 1924, he joined the Chicago illustration studio Palanske-Young.

Click image to download a 9.3-MB PDF of this 36-page booklet.

In the early 1930s, he did a series of posters for Illinois Central featuring Chicago and the Gulf Coast. Between 1938 and 1952, he painted the annual calendars as well as dining car menus for the Chicago & North Western. He also did work for, among others, Pierce-Arrow and Bridgestone Tires. He saw his work as seeking to “picture a striking, characteristic scene, and to present a considerable amount of information.”

Although the cover of this booklet is certainly striking, it is the only work by Proehl in the booklet, as well as the only work in color. The booklet is 36 pages, but five of them are blank: the inside covers plus a sheet of blue paper inserted between the covers and the body, only one page of which has any printing (just 11 words and a couple of graphics). Other than this sheet, the entire booklet is printed on glossy paper.
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We’ve already seen a 1937 Burlington escorted tours booklet. Such tours were actually quite a bargain: whether conducted by UP/C&NW or the Burlington, they were priced to cost exactly as much as the rail, hotel, and meal fares, with the tour guide and all of the work planning the tour provided at no additional charge. The main drawback was that people taking such tours were restricted by the tour schedules and couldn’t decide to linger for a day or two in some spot they liked.

Today’s booklet mentions escorted tours, but was produced mainly to encourage more adventuresome people to design their own more-flexible tours. The crisp black-and-white photos and inviting text describe all of the usual destinations reached by Burlington and its partners: Colorado, Yellowstone, Glacier, the Black Hills, California, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, and western dude ranches.

A printer code on the last interior printed page reads, “35M-4-37,” which I interpret to mean that 35,000 copies of the booklet were printed in April, 1937. If that’s correct, it is rather astounding that the Burlington would print so many copies of an expensive booklet such as this one.


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