This tabloid-sized ad for seven-day escorted tours of Virginia was published by the Chesapeake & Ohio in 1931. Jamestown, Williamsburg, Yorktown, Mt. Vernon, Monticello, and various historic monuments and sites in and around Washington, DC were all featured on the tour.
Click image to download a 19.3-MB PDF of this 24-page tabloid booklet.
Unfortunately, the booklet doesn’t specify what the “amazingly low price” was for the “complete all-expense tour.” It can’t have been very low, as it was first-class all the way: Pullman lower berths on overnight trains; accommodations at the Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, which at the time was the largest and fanciest in the city; outside staterooms in a boat trip from Washington to Norfolk; and so forth. The price probably depended on where tourists started, which might have been Chicago, Cincinnati, or other cities on the C&O and its associated lines.
This actually sound like it would have been a nice tour, especially if you took the kids. I want on similar (but much more modest) tour of the DC area when I was about 10 or 11, and the sights made a lasting impression on me. The Lincoln Memorial at night is something no American should miss. Surprisingly, for a tour this deluxe and inclusive, there’s almost no mention about the tour guides/escorts. Most other tours make a big deal about how knowledgeable they are and how well they will look after you, but I had to read the brochure twice before I noticed any reference to them. I suspect most families that took this tour were well enough off that they upgraded to a drawing room to keep all the little rug rats together instead of having them scattered out in the berths. 1931 was the year the Depression really was making its presence felt. Marketing to higher end clients made sense, but this still must have been an expensive tour. I wonder how many of those tours really got sold.
Jim