In the late 1930s, Northern Pacific issued a series of brochures that folded up to be 8-1/2″x11″ or a bit smaller. The brochures featured many black-and-white photos with the NP logo and a few headlines highlighted in red. This is a “pictorial” because 7 of the 8 pages are photos, with only one page of text.
Click image to download an 7.1-MB PDF of this brochure.
The brochure is undated but mentions both the North Coast Limited and Yellowstone Comet without mentioning air conditioning. Both trains were at least partly air conditioned by 1935, so my guess is this is from 1934.
We get a hint about dates with the quote from Emerson Hough. He was quite a naturalist and conservationist, exploring Yellowstone in the 1890’s for Field and Stream Magazine. He worked with Teddy Roosevelt to get anti poaching laws for Yellowstone. Hough wrote “Covered Wagon” in 1922. It was immensely popular, and made into a silent movie in 1923. Hough died in 1923. Given the popularity of the book, it’s likely the date can’t be any earlier than the mid-20’s. The layout is so similar to the preceding NP brochures that maybe early 30’s is a good guess. As usual, the NP uses old pictures. The cars on the Shoshone Canyon road look like commercial Whites and are from the late teens.
Regards, Jim