The 1888 Wonderland booklet gives up what I suspect was the fiction that Frederick Schwatka had written the lengthy section on Alaska. In fact, the only mention of Schwatka was to note that in January 1887 he set out “on a snow-shoe expedition through the Park [that] was so loudly trumpeted throughout the length and breadth of the land, but whose inglorious collapse, the second day out, gained no such general publicity.” After that, NP apparently dropped him like a modern-day celebrity implicated with Jeffrey Epstein.

Click image to download a 38.6-MB PDF of this 102-page booklet.

The booklet does note that one of the members of that failed expedition was photography F. Jay Hayes, who was already known as the “official photographer of the Northern Pacific Railroad.” While previous editions of Wonderland were filled with woodcuts, this one also has a dozen or so actual photographs, most of them taken by Haynes.

One of the woodcuts shows the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel with a sharp spire above a cupola. As I’ve noted before, I haven’t found any photographic evidence that this spire was actually built, so whoever did the woodcut must have just relied on building plans.

The front cover is much more colorful and imaginative than yesterday’s. Imaginative is the key word here, as no scene like that really exists, at least not in Northern Pacific territory. But there are plenty of equally spectacular scenes in the Northwest, so travelers would not feel cheated if they were attracted to a western trip based on this booklet.