At a cost of 50¢ — about $18 in today’s money — this booklet was the most expensive publication offered by Northern Pacific in 1905. However, it would have been worth it to many as it contained a dozen actual wildflowers along with a very brief description of each including its scientific name. Unfortunately, in the hundred years or so between its publication and when it was scanned, the once-colorful flowers faded into a uniform brown.

Click image to download an 5.2-MB PDF of this 44-page booklet.

This booklet is from archive.org and was scanned from an original in the Brigham Young University library. Unfortunately, the scan is missing the back cover and the pagination seems strange: the booklet includes a photo of the then-year-old Old Faithful Inn and an entire page of text about the inn, but for some reason they are separated by three pages, two of which are blank. There is no reason why the pages have to be together, but there was no reason to separate them either so it makes me wonder if the pages are in the right order. I’ve made some adjustments to the lighting and coloration of some of the pages, but haven’t changed the pagination.

People once preserved wildflowers by ironing the flowers between sheets of wax paper. The flowers retained their colors for several years, though I doubt they would have survived a century. Wax paper wasn’t commercially available until 1927 so the dozen wildflowers in this booklet were simply flattened and taped into the booklet. While anyone seeking to identify wildflowers would do better with photos or drawings, someone wanting a keepsake for their trip to the world’s first national park would have cherished this booklet.

Curiously, the flower on the booklet’s cover, which looks like some kind of buttercup, isn’t one of the dozen flowers inside. Nor are all of the dozen flowers inside even flowers: one is a fern and another is the seed floss (like dandelion floss) that appears after the flower has faded.

Other than the gold lettering, the cover of the 1905 Wonderland booklet is more subdued than in most previous years. Inside, however, the reader is treated to an innovation: fold-out pages presenting panoramic views of Yellowstone Park and other scenes. The booklet contains four different sets of fold outs, allowing for many large photos.

Click image to download a 37.9-MB PDF of this 118-page booklet.

After I finished making a PDF of this booklet using images from archive.org, I obtained my own copy of the booklet. I based the PDF on descriptions in various libraries saying the booklet was 24 cm (9-1/2″) tall. Based on the images, I made the booklet 6.3″ wide. It turns out the booklet is actually about 6.75″ wide, but parts of the interior pages were cropped out of the images in order to avoid harming the binding. No information was lost except that the PDF is slightly narrower than reality. This is true of earlier wonderland booklets as well. Continue reading →

The lead article of the 1903 Wonderland covered the travels of Louis Hennepin, a Franciscan friar who in 1679 and 1680 accompanied La Salle on early explorations of what is now the Midwest. Hennepin traveled as far south as the present-day site of Hannibal, Missouri and as far west as the site if Minneapolis. He was the first European to publish descriptions of Niagara Falls as well as St. Anthony Falls.

Click image to download a 47.8-MB PDF of this 116-page booklet.

The booklet’s second chapter describes “the last of the Mandans,” a tribe of Indians that was thought to be going extinct at the time. In fact, there are still some Mandans today. Lenz’s sculpture in the chapter heading resembles a scene from the 1977 movie, Last of the Mohicans. Continue reading →

Northern Pacific inaugurated the North Coast Limited on April 29, 1900. Yet it is indicative of how far the Wonderland series had strayed from being solely an advertisement for NP transportation that the new train was only mentioned once in the 1900 edition, and then on practically the last page and simply to announce when it would be introduced.

Click image to download a 49.2-MB PDF of this 112-page booklet.

The 1901 edition made up for this with a seven-page article describing the train and accompanied by more than a dozen photographs. But this article was preceded by a 15-page article taking an in-depth look at the history of Northern Pacific’s trademark, the monad. Accompanied by more than a dozen brightly colored illustrations of similar symbols in Asian culture, the article once again revealed Olin Wheeler’s abilities as a historian and not just a writer of advertising copy. Continue reading →

Wheeler took symbolism to a new level in 1898 by portraying a topless woman framed by a cornucopia of produce and accompanied by two naked cupids, one holding a miniature steam locomotive and the other a miniature sailing ship, on the Wonderland cover. It was a strange and daring choice. Americans in the Victorian age only reluctantly accepted nudity in fine art; in commercial art it could provoke outrage.

Click image to download a 37.9-MB PDF of this 112-page booklet.

In 1916, for example, the U.S. Mint issued a quarter with a vaguely bare-breasted image of Liberty. Unlike the Wonderland woman, no nipples were visible, yet religious leaders were still outraged by the “obscene” and “filthy” coin. Still, Northern Pacific got away with it in 1898; at least, Olin Wheeler didn’t lose his job. Controversial or not, it isn’t really clear what a topless woman, even in symbolic robes, had to do with Northwest travel except maybe to symbolize that railroads offered people more freedom of movement. Continue reading →