This 1923 booklet has an unusual format. Instead of the typical 8″x9″ pages, this one’s pages are 16″x9″. The cover shown below is the left side of the back cover. The text begins on the right side of the back cover, then continues on the front cover. It must have been confusing for people to read.

Click image to download a 26.3-MB PDF of this 16-page booklet, which is from the David Rumsey map collection.

The booklet’s basic pitch, of course, is that passengers can choose from “four great routes” to California. We’ve seen booklets with this theme several times before (for example, 1939, 1940, and 1946), but this is the oldest I’ve found so far.

Three of the routes — Sunset, Shasta, and American Canyon — each get 32-inch-wide spreads. The Golden State route only gets one 16-inch-wide page, possibly because half the route is identical to the Sunset route.

The American Canyon route, of course, was Southern Pacific’s name for what the Union Pacific called the Overland route. SP used that name in its timetables as early as the 1910s, but for some reason resisted using it in its early advertising, sometimes calling it the Ogden route and sometimes the American Canyon route. Recall that SP was also late to accept the Overland name for a train, which UP started using in 1887 but SP didn’t use until 1899.