This 1928 booklet has paintings by Maurice Logan on both the front and back covers. However, this is one of those curious railroad booklets in which what should be the front cover (shown immediately below) is on the back. Logan’s Redwood painting (shown at the end of this post) is on the front, yet is accompanied by a caption, not a headline like the other cover.

Click image to download a 10.6-MB PDF of this 16-page booklet.

The booklet also has a full-color centerfold cartoon-style map of the state by California artist Lewis Rothe. Born in Massachusetts in 1875, Rothe moved to San Francisco in 1903 and lived in the Bay Area or San Diego until his death in 1951.

“One skillfully devised drawing in an advertisement is more potent than a column of selling talk,” he wrote in a 1921 ad for his services. “Bring your requirements in booklets, folders and copy to us. Our methods of appeal, illustration and text writing will turn them into sound, profitable advertising.”

This is the Maurice Logan painting on the “front” cover. Download the entire booklet to see the whole cover.

SP hired Roth to make maps of Oregon and other states in its empire as well. But it is the Maurice Logan paintings, such as the one above, that really made SPs ads special in the 1920s.