Yesterday’s 1911 Summer Tours booklet included six hand-colored lithographic photos. This one has eight, enough to have a photo on almost every other spread. One of the photos, of Yosemite Park’s El Capitan, was also in the 1911 booklet; the others are new.
One of the photos shows tourists standing around a horse-drawn stagecoach in Yellowstone. The 1911 booklet had a motorcar tour in Colorado, but Yellowstone did not allow motor vehicles in the park until 1915. Another photo shows Yellowstone Falls, but it is such a close-up view that it could be any ordinary waterfall. The photo of the falls in the 1911 booklet is much better as it shows at least some of the surrounding canyon that makes the falls so impressive.
Other photos include Mammoth Hot Springs, Lake Tahoe, the Mormon Temple, and the Pillars of Hercules in the Columbia River Gorge. The Columbia River Highway would not open until 1917, so the best way to see the gorge in 1913 was by boat or train. The Pillars of Hercules were several tall basalt pillars that the railway threaded through. Sadly, the Oregon State Highway Department destroyed some of the pillars when it built U.S. 30 (now Interstate 84).