Here’s another menu with a cover painting by Michel Kady, similar to ones we’ve seen featuring Chinatown and other California scenes. This one is special because it has a train in the picture, something not found on most Southern Pacific menus.
Click image to download a 1.1-MB PDF of this menu.
Kady, who would have been no older than 30 when he made this painting, manages to convey with a few basic colors all the information needed to picture a scene. This style would have been perfect for lithographic printing in which each color would get its own pressing. But a close-up look at the image shows the dot pattern characteristic of four-color printing.
The train in the picture must be the southbound Cascade, as it went through this area in daylight while the northbound one normally passed this point between 4:00 and 5:00 am. In those days, northbound passengers would need to ride the Los Angeles-Portland (via the San Joaquin route) West Coast, and even that would pass this point in daylight only in the summer. Southbound, the Cascade and West Coast were combined into one train until Sacramento and were scheduled to pass Mount Shasta in daylight any time of the year.
The American Legion held its national convention in Portland in 1932, and legionnaires from Pennsylvania elected to take a train to Los Angeles and then the Southern Pacific to Portland. The West Coast went from Los Angeles to Portland via Sacramento on the San Joaquin route, so perhaps they went that way and got to see Mount Shasta in daylight. Or perhaps they spent a night in San Francisco on their way to Portland, in which case the didn’t get to see Mount Shasta unless they had their own train. In any case, this dinner menu offered them a choice of salmon or lamb with the usual trimmings.