Here’s a Rio Grande menu in the glued-on photo series that we haven’t seen before. It features the Geneva Steel mill that was built in Utah with federal funds during World War II. After the war, the federal government sold it to U.S. Steel for about a third of its value mainly because no other company had the resources to bid on it.
Click image to download a 864-KB PDF of this menu.
The mill, which closed in 2001, is on Utah Lake, south of the Great Salt Lake. The mountain in the background is the 11,753-foot Timpanogas (which must have been remeasured since 1949 as the menu says it is 12,008 feet high). Timpanogas is an Indian word meaning “rock canyon.” However, the back of this menu implies that it means “sleeping princess,” and someone with a good imagination can indeed see a sleeping figure in the silhouette of the mountain.
This menu was used for the Detroit Knights Templar charter train from Detroit to San Francisco. The date on the menu, September 18-22, 1949, must be the date of the convention, which means the menu must have been used a few days before that.