This issue of West, the first I’ve seen dated later than 1942, celebrates the 75th anniversary of the completion of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific transcontinental railroad. The cover drawing shows Chinese workers being “lowered in baskets to chip a ledge for the roadbed in the granite cliffs.” In fact, this was a myth made up to impress early tourists and repeated by many historians since then based on little evidence. What we do know is that the vertical cliffs shown in the image were in fact only 45 to 70 degrees, which would have made it difficult to lower anyone in a basket.

Click image to download a 3.7-MB PDF of this brochure.

The cover drawing is signed W.R. Cameron, which means William Ross Cameron (1893-1971), a New York-born artist who moved to San Francisco when he was 12. There he studied art and worked as a staff artist for the Oakland Post, San Francisco Chronicle, and Call Bulletin newspapers as well as a freelance artist.

“Ordinarily we’d make quite a fuss over such an event as the 75th anniversary of America’s first transcontinental railroad—of which Southern Pacific is a part,” says page 4 of this issue. “But in May, 1944. . . we’re too busy keeping the war trains rolling on our 15,000 miles of line.” If there were no issues of West in 1943, perhaps it was resurrected solely to be SP’s token effort to celebrate its diamond jubilee.