“Vista Dome cars will be featured in the shining new stainless steel California Zephyr,” says the back of this menu. In fact, this menu is dated April 21, 1950, so the California Zephyr had already been operating for more than a year.

Click image to download a 780-KB PDF of this menu.

The cover photo of dome-coach Silver Scout was taken when it was used on the Exposition Flyer before the CZ replaced it. Silver Scout was a Western Pacific car, but the letters “WP” in the upper right corner of the car have been “photoshopped” out by Rio Grande marketing people. A photo of sister dome-coach Silver Schooner is shown below in the exact same location; the adjacent heavyweight cars give away the fact that this is the Exposition Flyer and not the California Zephyr.

According to the Denver Public Library, this photo was taken by Denver photographer Otto Roach on March 22, 1948 near Crescent, Colorado. Roach must have taken the photo for the Rio Grande as several other photos reproduced on menus were also taken by Roach.

This must have been one of the last “glued-on photo” menus issued by the Rio Grande. It is the first one I have seen in this series that is dated 1950; all previous ones were in the 1943-1949 range. Within a few months, at most, this style of menus was replaced by menus with scenic color photos directly printed on the covers.

This is a lunch menu with complete meals built around halibut steak ($1.65), chicken pie ($1.75), and spaghetti and meat balls ($1.50). The full lunches come with soup, potatoes, vegetables, bread, dessert, and beverage; the same entrées also appear on the a la carte side for 40¢ less, so the full meal was a pretty good deal. For some reason, Rio Grande’s specialty, mountain trout, doesn’t appear on either the a la carte or the table d’hôte side. Multiply prices by 12 to get today’s dollars.