In the late 1920s, Southern Pacific issued a series of photo books that were nearly 9″x12″ in size. The book covers featured glorious paintings by Maurice Logan, which in many cases wrapped around to the back cover. Inside were crisp full-page black-and-white photos printed on glossy paper with small photo captions and otherwise almost no text. The books I have contain between 46 and 74 such photos.
Click image to download a 29.4-MB PDF of this 76-page book.
These books are perfect bound. Although I’ve had them in my collection for quite some time, I was unable to scan them until my recent purchase of a book scanner. Some of the pages suffer from a little distortion, but I hope as I use the scanner more I’ll be able to figure out how to minimize this.
Today’s booklet covers California and includes 74 photographs starting with Yosemite Valley and ending with an unnamed mission “in a California valley.” The photography is excellent and I apologize if some of the photos are not reproduced in this PDF as they were in the original book.
Most of the photos are uncredited, though one says, “Moulin © 1926.” That would be Gabriel Moulin (1872-1945), a Bay Area photographer who specialized in architecture and urban landscapes. His photo in this book, however, is of Southern Pacific tracks going by Mount Shasta. He took this photo from a popular spot for SP photographers, as we’ve seen similar photos of the same location, including this one in color.
The date on this copyright notice gives one clue about when this book was published. Unlike other books in the series (some of which will be presented in the next few days), this one has no title page, no forward, and no list of titles in the series. Other books in the series also have a map in the back showing Southern Pacific’s main routes. That map was made in 1928, so this book is almost certainly from before that year. Indeed, it may have been the first in the series, which is why it doesn’t include a list of other titles in the series.
Another clue is the fact that a two-page ad in a printers’ trade magazine featured the Maurice Logan painting that wrapped around the covers of this book, which the magazine identified as “Del Monte View.” Though the spread said the picture is “courtesy Southern Pacific,” the ad was actually for the San Francisco office of Sterling Engraving Company, a New York City pioneer in color printing. A small notice on the inside front cover of this book invites readers to purchase a reproduction of this cover painting “from newsboys on trains” for 50¢ (about $9 in today’s money).
Sterling Engraving may have made it possible to print the full-color cover, but the printing itself was done by Sunset Press, which must have been part of Sunset magazine. Between 1904 and 1929, Sunset was owned by Southern Pacific as part of its campaign to promote travel in the West. While it is possible the book is from 1926, the year the Moulin photo was copyrighted, I suspect it was issued in 1927, the same year as that magazine ad.