I don’t normally try to indicate the values or rarity of items presented here, but this particular menu must be rare because it was only issued to publicize a movie, the Duchess of Idaho, which was released by MGM in July, 1950. Union Pacific was happy to promote the movie as it advertised not only Sun Valley but UP trains to Sun Valley.

Click image to download a 1.3-MB PDF of this menu.

While part of the movie was filmed on a train, it was a Chicago & North Western 400 train, not the City of Portland. One of the songs, however, references Union Pacific streamliners, so few movie-goers probably noticed the distinction. Outdoor scenes in the rest of the movie were filmed at Sun Valley, though I don’t know if the cover photo on this menu is from the movie or was merely of some of the actors relaxing between takes.

I first saw this menu cover on the Water Level web site. That web site publishes individual pages of each menu, and I assembled them into a PDF that I posted in 2013. After many years I was able to acquire one of my own that I posted here two years ago. Since they seem to be rare, when I saw another for sale this year, I picked it up.

All three of these menus are dated June or July of 1950, and I suspect these and possibly August were the only months the menu was issued. This one and the Water Level menu are marked for the Los Angeles Limited, while the other one is marked “2E-3W.” 2E would also be the Los Angeles Limited while 3W would be the Utahn, a train that went only from Omaha to Los Angeles, connecting at Lund, Utah with a train to Cedar City for people wanting to visit Bryce, Zion, and the north rim of the Grand Canyon. I don’t know why the menu would be used on two different trains, but both were heavyweights so it must have made sense to the Union Pacific.

As noted, today’s menu was for trains 1 & 2, the Los Angeles Limited, and has that train’s name in its unusual and elegant script at the top of each interior page. While the other two menus are for lunch, this one is for breakfast and includes a wide range of a la carte items and ten different full breakfasts. Someone has written “Monday July 31 @ 9:AM” at the top, suggesting that the menu was used on that morning in 1950.