“When life closes in about you and you feel the need of an unusual vacation, head for the Open Range!” suggests the back of this menu. “The American West and a Rocky Mountain Dude Ranch are names to conjure with wherever vacation places and vacation travel are mentioned.” Part of the appeal, the front cover photo suggests, is handsome cowboys leading your horseback trips and lovely young waitresses in the dining hall.
Click image to download a 1.4-MB PDF of this menu.
Inside, the dinner menu offered a table d’hôte meal for $1.25 with entrées including mountain trout with bacon, lamb chops with French toast, fillet of beef with mushroom sauce, omelet with crab meat, and assorted cold meats with apricot chutney. All came with appetizer, soup, a Big Baked Potato, beans, salad, corn muffins, dessert, and coffee. Other plate dinners were offered for 50¢ and 75¢.
The menu is undated, but lists A.W. Thomson as superintendent of dining cars and E.E. Nelson as passenger traffic manager. That’s not much help, however, as Thomson was superintendent when Nelson became passenger traffic manager in 1928 and both continued in those jobs at least through 1948. The prices are similar to a HIGHRoad menu we’ve seen from 1936, but based on the simpler format, I would guess this menu is from at least a year or two before that.