In 1946, UP introduced a series of menus each featuring a color photo that usually wrapped around the back cover. The front cover included a brief photo caption and sometimes the name of the train. The back had a more detailed photo caption. By the time Amtrak took over in 1971, UP had issued at least 143 of these menus, of which I’ve posted 141. Please download my checklist and let me know if you have seen one that I haven’t identified.
I’ve grouped these menus into several geographic areas: Colorado; Missouri-Nebraska; Nevada; Pacific Northwest; San Francisco Bay Area; Southern California; Sun Valley; Utah (including the Grand Canyon); Wyoming; and Universities and Colleges. Some menus, such as those depicting sights in Missouri, Denver, and San Francisco, would usually be used on specific trains, while others might be found on any Union Pacific dining car. Color menus were also sometimes used in Union Pacific lodges in Utah parks, Sun Valley, and Union Pacific’s West Yellowstone dining hall.
Because of the design differences, I’ve also separated out the menus whose photos don’t wrap around to the back cover. These were mostly used on the City of Portland and City of Los Angeles.
Colorado
Colorado photos feature Rocky Mountain National Park and Denver; Denver photos seem to have been restricted to the City of Denver and City of St. Louis while Rocky Mountain Park photos were used on other trains as well. Two different photos of Bear Lake appear to have been taken on the same day as they both have the same woman in the picture.
 1953 Menu |  1954 Menu |  1955 Menu |
 1955 Menu |  1957 Menu |  1957 Menu |
 1957 Menu |  1957 Menu |  1958 Menu |
 1958 Menu |  1958 Menu |  1960 Menu |
 1971 Menu |
Missouri-Nebraska
Missouri and Nebraska don’t really go together except in the sense that they are two states served by the Union Pacific that are represented by very few menus. The Missouri menus appear to have been used exclusively on the City of St. Louis.
 1951 Menu |  1952 Menu |  1952 Menu |
 1958 Menu |
Nevada
This series includes at least two menus featuring Las Vegas and four showing Boulder/Hoover Dam.
 1947 Menu |  1948 Menu |  1954 Menu |
 1957 Menu |  1958 Menu |  1959 Menu |
 1964 Menu |  1968 Menu |  1970 Menu |
Pacific Northwest
This series includes photos of Mt. Hood, Mt. Rainier, the Columbia River Gorge, Portland, and Seattle. Counting one photo showing both Portland and Mt. Hood, UP had five color photo menus featuring Mt. Hood, more than any other landmark except Sun Valley and Fisherman’s Wharf.
Some of the dinner menus shown here vary from the norm in two ways. First, the photo doesn’t wrap around to the back cover. Second, a second fold has been added just to display the UP logo. Unlike most dining car menus, these do not have an a la carte side, instead just offering table d’hôte meals. A few other menus from the late 1950s to the early 1960s also omit the a la carte side, and at least three others don’t have wrap-around photos. The table-d’hôte-only dinner menus were used on the domeliner City of Portland and the other non-wraparound menus were usually used for other meals in the dome-diner.
San Francisco Bay Area
These menus were used almost exclusively on UP-SP trains such as the City of San Francisco and San Francisco Overland Limited. I’ve only found two menus marked for San Francisco trains that don’t show San Francisco scenes: one of the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City and one of Zion National Park (both of which are included in the Utah menus below). The California State Railroad Museum has a menu showing a different view of Nob Hill that is not in my collection; you can see it on my 2016 missing menus page.
Southern California
These menus include Disneyland, Los Angeles, and various beach scenes. Union Pacific’s Southern California guide included Monterey in this geographic area even though more people associate it with Northern California. Although UP had pre-war menus featuring Yosemite Falls, I haven’t found a UP color wraparound menu showing Yosemite Park: UP possibly considered that to be an SP destination and SP didn’t include any such photos on its San Francisco train menus.
Sun Valley
UP promoted its Sun Valley resort with more than a dozen menus featuring the area in both summer and winter. UP sold the resort in 1964, so it’s not surprising that the newest menus I’ve found featuring Sun Valley are dated 1965.
Utah/Grand Canyon
This series includes two different views of the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City as well as several of the southern Utah Parks: Bryce, Zion, and Grand Canyon. Grand Canyon, of course, is in Arizona but the UP served it via its Utah Parks Company.
UP photographers sometimes rephotographed scenes several years apart. This might be necessary to update photos that displayed dated automobiles, hairstyles, or clothing. Curiously, two photos of the Great White Throne in Zion Park, one including a pretty girl with a now-dated hairdo and the other without the girl, were used on menus from a similar time period and–judging from the cloud patterns–were probably taken on the same day. A man standing behind the girl was cropped out of the photo but can be seen in other UP advertising.
Wyoming
Most Wyoming photos are of Yellowstone geysers or Jackson Hole, but there are also two of Lake Marie in the Snowy Range near Laramie, Wyoming.
 1947 Menu |  1947 Menu |  1947 Menu |
 1949 Menu |  1952 Menu |  1957 Menu |
 1958 Menu |  1958 Menu |  1958 Menu |
 1958 Menu |  1958 Menu |  1965 Menu |
 1967 Menu |  1968 Menu |  1968 Menu |
 1970 Menu |  1970 Menu |  1971 Menu |
 1971 Menu |
Universities and Colleges
In 1949, UP began a series of menus featuring the campuses of various colleges and universities in the eleven states served by the railroad. My collection includes twenty-three different schools, and I’ve identified one more for the College of Idaho. You can see this one on my 2016 missing menus page.
I’ve identified four menus showing California schools, five from Nebraska, two each from Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Oregon, and Washington, and just one from Montana, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming. I suspect there is at least one more from Utah, but haven’t seen it.
I haven’t found any of these menus used on a UP dining car after 1953; the 1954 menu was used at a Kiwanis Club meeting. Many of the cover photos show the college’s administration building, which tends to be a pretty boring subject, which may be why UP dropped this series.
Non-Wraparound Menus
When UP began this menu series, it included a photo of Multnomah Falls that apparently didn’t fit the wraparound format, so it printed the photo on the front cover only. Another photo of the Columbia River Gorge was also printed only on the front cover. Both of these menus had a small white border below the photo for a brief caption and the name of the train.
Beginning in 1957, UP issued at least six more standard-sized menus whose photos didn’t wrap around to the back. All of these photos were printed to fill the entire front cover, while the name of the train was put on the inside of the menu.
 1954 Menu |  1957 Menu |  1958 Menu |
 1959 Menu |  1960 Menu |  1960 Menu |
 1961 Menu |  1961 Menu |  1961 Menu |
 1961 Menu |  1961 Menu |  1961 Menu |
 1961 Menu |  1961 Menu |  1961 Menu |
 1961 Menu |
When the dome-diners were introduced, the menus were slightly redesigned with an extra flap added onto the back page of the menu. The outside of the flap had a UP logo; the inside had the name of the train. These menus were placed into UP menu holders so that the name of the train would be visible, as if passengers were likely to forget it.
Most of these were used on the City of Portland and City of Los Angeles dome diners, but some were used on the City of San Francisco, which had an ordinary diner. In deference to the Southern Pacific, the City of San Francisco menus had a winged streamliner logo instead of the UP logo on the outside of the flap.
Some of the photos used, such as the Sun Valley skier, had been used on wraparound menus but were recropped to fit the cover. Other photos were new pictures, often of the same subjects as older ones, but shot to fill the front cover rather than the landscape mode of the wraparound photos.
The City of Portland and City of Los Angeles menus were table d’hôte only, perhaps as a way of easing the burden of the chefs in the dome car’s kitchen. The extra flap didn’t last long, and the full-page, non-wraparound photos lasted only a little longer, possibly because most of the subjects of UP photos were more suited to a landscape than a portrait format.
 1957 Menu |  1957 Menu |  1958 Menu |
 1958 Menu |  1958 Menu |  1958 Menu |
 1959 Menu |  1959 Menu |  1959 Menu |
 1959 Menu |  1959 Menu |  1959 Menu |
 1960 Menu |  1960 Menu |  1960 Menu |