People taking the Northern Pacific to or from the Golden Gate International Exposition would probably want to take at least a day or two to stop at Mount Rainier along the way. This booklet shows them what they might see in the park and how to get there by bus from Tacoma for $9 or Seattle for $10.50 round trip. In today’s dollars, that would be $190/$220, which is pretty expensive for a 200-mile bus trip.

Click image to download a 6.3-MB PDF of this 16-page booklet.

Northern Pacific appears to have printed this entire booklet using just green and red inks. The green is light enough that it shows up when it needs to, as in a tree or a field, but dark enough that it doesn’t make faces too ghastly looking. NP artists went to some effort to print five photos using both green and red, almost giving the impression of being full-color photos.

A printer’s mark on page 14 says that 25,000 copies of this booklet were printed in March, 1939. The back cover includes some photos of the interiors of the heavyweight North Coast Limited, but the rest of the book is devoted entirely to Rainier. The booklet is courtesy of the NPRHA — Lorenz Schrenk collection.