At a cost of 50¢ — about $18 in today’s money — this booklet was the most expensive publication offered by Northern Pacific in 1905. However, it would have been worth it to many as it contained a dozen actual wildflowers along with a very brief description of each including its scientific name. Unfortunately, in the hundred years or so between its publication and when it was scanned, the once-colorful flowers faded into a uniform brown.

Click image to download an 5.2-MB PDF of this 44-page booklet.

This booklet is from archive.org and was scanned from an original in the Brigham Young University library. Unfortunately, the scan is missing the back cover and the pagination seems strange: the booklet includes a photo of the then-year-old Old Faithful Inn and an entire page of text about the inn, but for some reason they are separated by three pages, two of which are blank. There is no reason why the pages have to be together, but there was no reason to separate them either so it makes me wonder if the pages are in the right order. I’ve made some adjustments to the lighting and coloration of some of the pages, but haven’t changed the pagination.

People once preserved wildflowers by ironing the flowers between sheets of wax paper. The flowers retained their colors for several years, though I doubt they would have survived a century. Wax paper wasn’t commercially available until 1927 so the dozen wildflowers in this booklet were simply flattened and taped into the booklet. While anyone seeking to identify wildflowers would do better with photos or drawings, someone wanting a keepsake for their trip to the world’s first national park would have cherished this booklet.

Curiously, the flower on the booklet’s cover, which looks like some kind of buttercup, isn’t one of the dozen flowers inside. Nor are all of the dozen flowers inside even flowers: one is a fern and another is the seed floss (like dandelion floss) that appears after the flower has faded.