Route of the Rio Grande

Dated 1926, this handsome little booklet contains 15 pages (about 4,500 words) of text praising Colorado scenery by the then-well-known “cowboy poet,” Arthur Chapman. I put cowboy poet in quotation marks because Chapman wasn’t a cowboy; he was a newspaper writer who wrote poems about cowboys. In any case, the booklet also reprints Chapman’s most famous poem, Out Where the West Begins.

Click image to download a 15.1-MB PDF of this 34-page booklet.

The text is accompanied by ten large photos that do an excellent job of conveying the beauty and grandeur of Rio Grande country despite the fact that they are printed with just two colors: black and a reddish brown. Unfortunately, my copy of this booklet appears to be missing the last page. Judging from other booklets of similar vintage, that page probably gave the names and addresses of Rio Grande travel agents.


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