Baneberry and Chickweed Menu

Here’s a 1966 Denver Zephyr dinner menu we haven’t seen before. This one has a painting of “Baneberry — flower and berry — and Chickweed” on the front cover and one of “Columbine and Deer Vine” on the back. We’ve previously seen a 1962 menu that had the same two paintings reversed: columbine on the front and baneberry on the back.

Click image to download a 1.5-MB PDF of this menu.

We’ve also seen other menu pairs like this with paintings of wild rose on one side and buttercups on the other and vetch on one side and butter & eggs on the other. Plus we’ve seen one with coneflower on the front and gaillardia on the back, suggesting a missing menu with gaillardia on the front and coneflower on the back. The train also had a beverage menu with the columbine painting on the cover.

All of these paintings were done by an artist named Kathryn Fligg, working for the Paul Cret‘s architectural firm (by then known as Harbeson, Hough, Livingston & Larson), which designed train interiors for the Budd Company. An email I’ve received from Fligg indicated she did a total of 115 paintings that were hung in Denver Zephyr bedrooms, and it is a shame that Burlington used only eight of them on its menu covers as the rest have probably disappeared.


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