Reindeer Recipes

This 1925 breakfast menu has an image of caribou, also known as reindeer, on the cover. There isn’t any reason given for it; the back cover has an article about the improvement in freight train productivity, and none of the meats on the menu are caribou.

Click image to download a 1.2-MB PDF of this menu.

The explanation may be found in a little booklet the Great Northern issued at about the same time with nearly the same cover. Domestic reindeer meat imported from Alaska, the railway hoped, would become the latest fad, and it promised to include reindeer on some of its menus (but didn’t on the breakfast menu above). Continue reading

National Apple Week

The state of Washington produces the vast majority of apples grown in the United States, and most are grown in the Yakima or Wenatchee valleys (or valleys tributary to Wenatchee such as the Okanogan Valley). Northern Pacific and Union Pacific competed for Yakima Valley traffic, but Great Northern had Wenatchee and its tributaries all to itself, so naturally the railroad promoted Wenatchee apples on many of its menus.

Click image to download a 526-KB PDF of this menu.

This menu was issued during National Apple Week, October 31-November 6, 1925. Nearly all of the items on the menu feature apples, though it is hard to imagine parents would accept an apple cobler, apple fritter, or baked apple with cream as an entrée followed by apple pie or apple pudding for dessert. The back cover has a helpful guide to fifteen apple varieties, about half of which are familiar today and half are rare. Continue reading

Great Northern Special Event Menus

With their ornate borders surrounding a field providing room for a glue-on photo above and the name of the party below, these menus were clearly designed to be used for tours or special events. The ragged edge and string binding (superfluous when there is no menu insert) add touches of elegance to the menus.

Click image to download a 646-KB PDF of this menu.

Adorned with a photo of Mt. Grinnell taken from near the Many Glacier Hotel, this menu was used at a Great Northern employees dinner in Minneapolis. Inside, an insert is bound into the menu with a string, but this was unnecessary as just two of the four pages of the insert were printed. Continue reading

Glacier Park Wildflowers and Waterfalls

The first menu today has a Walter Loos painting that we’ve previously seen inside the 1927 edition of Great Northern’s Call of the Mountains. GN commissioned Loos to make a number of these wildflower paintings; most of the originals were probably displayed in the Glacier Park hotels and copies were later mounted in the spaces between the dining car windows of the 1947 streamlined Empire Builder.

Click image to download a 962-KB PDF of this menu.

Inside is a beverage and a la carte menu but no table d’hôte menu, suggesting it was probably used for lunch. Sirloin steak is a dollar. This menu was probably used on the Oriental Limited or another regular train rather than a special tour. Continue reading

Washington Menus

The first Great Northern menu today has a cover that seems to have been custom-designed for one tour, in this case of a trade tour for Spokane merchants. The image on the cover shows an industrialized Spokane Falls; I recently had dinner at a restaurant that had pretty much this view of the falls.

Click image to download a 1.4-MB PDF of this menu.

Inside this 16-page booklet are menus for ten different meals, including every meal from noon September 15 through evening of September 18 except for dinner on September 16, during which the meal was presumably eaten off the train, probably in Minneapolis or St. Paul. Most of the unpriced dinners offer just two entrées, though some lunches offer three and breakfasts four or more. Continue reading

First Anniversary Menu

Great Northern kept its media campaign going when the 1924 Oriental Limited reached its first anniversary. This elaborate menu cover encloses a standard two-page menu contained within six pages of text and photos advertising the train.

Click image to download a 2.5-MB PDF of this menu.
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It isn’t clear whether this menu was used for a special trains of, say, travel writers or agents, or if it was used as a standard menu on board the train itself. Though the latter seems unlikely, the menu in the centerfold is pretty standard, offering Great Northern’s chicken pot pie (which was a specialty of its dining cars) or a vegetable or fish dinner for 75 cents (about $11 today) or a sirloin steak, among other a la carte items, for $1.35 (about $19 today).

Livestock Expo Menus

The Great Northern archive at the Minnesota History Center has a huge number of different menus from the mid-1920s, the period I searched through to find information about the historical expeditions of 1925 and 1926. Most of the menus in the files I found were used for tours or special events. Some were clearly also used on the Oriental Limited, others were generic tour menus with a pretty cover with a blank spot to be filled in for each tour. Others, such as the ones shown today, were custom designed just for one particular trip or event.

Click image to download a 942-KB PDF of this menu.

The first menu is a special dinner menu used on Great Northern dining cars during the week of November 24-29, 1924. It features beef tenderloin or roast rib of beef taken from prize-winning beef purchased at auction at the Junior Livestock Show held in South St. Paul in early November. Some of the winners — obviously not all in the beef category — are pictured on the cover. The complete meal was $1.50, or about $22 today. Continue reading

Menu for Growin’ Ups

This childrens’ menu for the new Oriental Limited is 12 page long and includes a separate menu for every day of the week. The wood cut on the cover depicting the William Crooks is compared with the “grown up” P2 (4-8-2) locomotive shown on page 2 that was the pride of the Great Northern in 1924.

Click image to download a 1.9-MB PDF of this menu.
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Each menu page is accompanied by a cartoonish drawing of a small child dressed as a railroader: engineer, fireman, conductor, etc. Probably so that little girls wouldn’t feel left out, most of the drawings are androgynous; with curly hair and long eyelashes, the children could easily be considered female. Of course, any girls in 1924 who thought they could grow up to work in these jobs would be disappointed: except during World War II, the railroads pretty much exclusively hired men for these positions until the 1980s.

The Finest Trans-Continental Train

Here are two more brochures promoting the 1924 Oriental Limited. Both use different graphics from yesterday’s and one is 8-1/2″x11″ instead of 7″x10″.

Click image to download a 623-KB PDF of this brochure.

The first one, signed by Great Northern’s agent in Detroit, emphasizes that — rather than being merely a means to an end — the new train is “a source of real pleasure and delightful adventure” thanks to a well-built railway and the use of superb passenger equipment “fresh from the Pullman shops.” The graphic in the upper left of the first page is a non-colorized version of the graphic used on page 3 of yesterday’s brochures, while page 3 of today’s brochure depicts a barber cutting a woman’s hair. As we’ve previously seen on a blotter, GN was careful to point out that the barber is white. The graphic is signed something like “Foit” with “GNRR” in smaller letters. Continue reading

A Vacation Suggestion for You!

Other than some items that are difficult to scan because they are too large or in bindings that would break if I laid them flat on the scanner, and some trivial items such as tickets and perhaps a few postcards, I’ve posted nearly all of the paper items in my collection. However, during my research on Great Northern’s historical expeditions, I photographed many brochures and menus at the Minnesota History Center. The PDFs made from these photos aren’t perfect due to parallax issues (and a few are blurry due to my hasty photography), but they are still readable.

Click image to download a 516-KB PDF of this brochure.

In 1924, Great Northern introduced its “new Oriental Limited” and engaged in a huge marketing effort to promote the train. This included these four-page brochures sent to people in the travel industry. The three brochures presented today use the same graphics but have different text typed on the first two pages. The one above, signed by Great Northern’s agent in Los Angeles, suggests a trip to Glacier Park would be a wonderful vacation. Continue reading