This book has 74 black-and-white photos and two Maurice Logan paintings. Unlike the previous books shown here, the Logan painting on the front cover doesn’t wrap around to the back. Instead, the front cover shows a New Orleans scene while the back cover shows a Native American woman and her baby, probably in Arizona or southern California.
Click image to download a 29.1-MB PDF of this 84-page book.
Unlike the previous two books presented here, this one has a title page. This makes me think it was published after the California and Shasta books. The title page reveals that SP sold the books for “One Dollar a Copy,” which is close to $19 in today’s money. This was probably reasonable for many of the people who could afford to right Southern Pacific’s overnight trains. The title page also says the book was “printed by Sunset Press,” but that could still mean that Sterling Engraving, which printed images of the cover painting of the California book, printed the covers that were then bound to the contents.
Unlike a couple of books that I’ll present in the next few days, this one does not have a forward, a one- or two-paragraph blurb presenting a romantic description of the contents of the book. This makes me think this book was printed after the Shasta book (which I dated to 1928) but before the books I’ll present in the next few days. So I think this book was probably issued in 1929.
The page after the map in the back, which is blank in previous books, lists “similar view books” including the Shasta Route and California books previously shown here. Also listed are three books I’ve never seen, “Puget Sound and British Columbia,” “Hawaii,” and “San Francisco.” The Puget Sound and Hawaii books may not have sold as well as their price was $1.50, or close to $28 in today’s money, plus they weren’t on Southern Pacific routes so SP passengers would have less incentive to buy one.
The Sunset Route was partly in California, and 30 of the photos in this book are of California scenes. At least three of these photos are also in yesterday’s California book while two other photos in each book show the same scenes but from slightly different angles. Such duplication is unfortunate as it there are plenty of scenic views in California to spread across multiple books without duplication.