Scenic Overland Route Postcard Folder

This folder opens up to show 18 hand-colored photos of scenes along the Union Pacific. Half of the photos are of Union Pacific train stations, which were not necessarily the most scenic sites along the route.

Click image to download an 6.4-MB PDF of this postcard folder. The PDF repeats part of one page in order to show the complete cover to the folder.

The folder was published by Barkalow Brothers in 1944. Sydney Denise Barkalow owned a news stand in Omaha and his brother Derrick Vail Barkalow was a printer. In 1865 they contracted with the Union Pacific to be news agents on the railroad’s trains, selling newspapers, magazines, books, candy, and other items to passengers. Eventually, they ran train station news stands from Chicago and St. Louis to Portland and San Francisco and for a time were exclusive dealers of postcards and photo booklets for the Union Pacific.

We’ve already seen a booklet the Barkalows published early in the twentieth century. Born in 1843 and 1944, the brothers would have been 100 years old or more when this folder was published, so it seems likely that their company survived them for at least a generation.


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