Southern Pacific’s book for the Overland Route contained just 46 photos. But it had a title page, a forward, a map, and a list of other photo books in the series, all of which suggest this copy was issued later than the ones we’ve seen in the past few days.
Click image to download a 19.8-MB PDF of this 52-page book.
But we don’t have to rely on those indicators, as this book is also the first that names E.W. Clapp, rather than F.S. McGinnis, as SP’s passenger traffic manager. Clapp started this job in 1931 and only lasted about three years before being replaced by a J.T. Monroe in 1934. Thus, this book must have been issued sometime between 1931 and 1933. I’m inclined on the former year as I imagine that the Depression soon killed this line of photo books.
Like the Sunset Route book, this one has a different painting on the back cover rather than one painting that wrapped around the covers. While the front cover shows a scene somewhere in the Sierras, possibly Lake Tahoe, the back cover is the classic Maurice Logan painting of a Southern Pacific train crossing the Great Salt Lake. This book is a little more commercial than the other books as it has more pictures of SP trains, including the back cover.
It is worth noting that the list of books in this series on the inside front cover only includes California, the Overland Route, the Sunset Route, and the Shasta Route, the four books we’ve seen in the last few days. Note that there apparently was never a Golden State route book. I suspect this is because most of Southern Pacific’s portion of the Golden State Route followed the Sunset route, so there wasn’t much point in publishing a separate book for the Golden State route.
The Sunset Route book presented here a couple of days ago also listed books about the Puget Sound, Hawaii, and San Francisco. Apparently they were no longer being published in 1931 or whenever this book came out. It is possible, though unlikely, that those listings were more aspirational and the books were never published at all. More likely is that SP only printed a few copies of those books and they didn’t sell well enough to print more.
The Overland Route, of course, extends from Chicago to San Francisco, and this book includes a token photo of Chicago, one of Wyoming, and one in Utah east of Salt Lake City. There is also a photo of Yellowstone Falls. The rest of the photos, however, are solidly in Southern Pacific territory.
This includes six photos in western Utah, or seven if the last “photo” in the book is counted. Though it is included in the 46 count, it is a black-and-white image of Thomas Hill‘s 1881 painting of the driving of the Golden Spike in Utah.
Although more than half of Southern Pacific’s portion of the Overland Route was in Nevada, the book contains just three photos from the Silver State. The premiere Overland Route train, the Overland Limited, went through Nevada during daylight hours, but the railroad must have decided that Nevada’s scenery wasn’t that memorable.
The rest of the photos show scenes in California. Although I haven’t done a careful comparison, I don’t recall that any photos in this book are also in the California or Shasta books. It appears that SP marketers finally decided that putting the same photos in more than one book might reduce sales of the books.
The fact that this book has only 46 photos (45 if the painting isn’t counted), compared with as many as 74 in the other books, may be a reflection of the economy in 1931. This book, like the others we have seen, was advertised for $1, so SP might have reduced the page count as a cost-saving measure.