For 1939, the cover of the Union Pacific Pacific Northwest booklet shows a map of Oregon and Washington indicating Union Pacific rail lines and some, but not all, connecting lines. Southern Pacific lines to California are shown, as is the Northern Pacific’s line to Aberdeen, Washington (did Union Pacific have trackage rights on this line?) and Great Northern’s line north of Seattle, but no other NP or GN lines.
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Inside are 35 black-and-white photos that especially emphasize mountains such as Rainier, St. Helens, Hood, and McKinley. Multnomah Falls and the Columbia River Gorge are also pictured, but there are no longer photos of the Columbia River Highway, which the state of Oregon had begun to by-pass with a water-level route. Instead, Sun Valley, the pioneering ski resort which UP opened in 1936, is featured on the booklet’s opening pages.
The only train photos in this booklet are one interior and one exterior photo of the M-10001, which was then providing five-times-a-month service as the City of Portland. The booklet also mentions the “beautiful Portland Rose” (which in the late 1930s operated in two sections: one with sleeping cars only and one with coaches, the latter of which merged with the heavyweight Challenger east of Green River, Wyoming) and the Pacific Limited, which was a sort-of “limited-of-everywhere” train that divided at various points to go to Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.