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 … Continue reading
The 1900 through 1903 editions of Wonderland featured stunning three-dimensional covers portraying fantastic scenes symbolizing the West. When I first saw them, I thought they were classic examples of trompe l’oeil, meaning two-dimensional artworks that fool the eye into thinking … 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 … Continue reading
If the cover of Wonderland ’96 looked modernistic, the one for Wonderland ’97 looks like the cover of a Harry Potter story or some other fantasy novel. A Montana State University master’s thesis on early Yellowstone advertising notes that most … Continue reading
For 1896, Olin Wheeler at once simplified the titles but almost completely broke from the travelogue format. In that year and the following ten years, the titles would simply be “Wonderland” followed by the number of the year — two … Continue reading
Archive.org has two copies of Olin Wheeler’s 1894 Wonderland, titled Indianland and Wonderland. Neither have covers, so I won’t try to reproduce them here. If you want one, I recommend this one, which was scanned in color instead of black … Continue reading
For 1893, Northern Pacific handed the job of writing its annual Wonderland booklet to Olin Dunbar Wheeler. Over the next fourteen years, Wheeler would transform the series from a mere travelogue to what amounted to an annual magazine with individual … Continue reading
Although the Northern Pacific may have been progressive in hiring a woman to write its 1890 Wonderland booklet, it wasn’t progressive enough to use her travelogue for more than one year, as it had with John Hyde’s. Instead, for 1891, … Continue reading
After running John Hyde’s travelogue for five years straight with only modest changes, NP must have decided it needed something new for 1890. Hyde, who was living in Omaha, had a new neighbor named Robert Peattie, who had recently moved … Continue reading
The 1888 Wonderland booklet gives up what I suspect was the fiction that Frederick Schwatka had written the lengthy section on Alaska. In fact, the only mention of Schwatka was to note that in January 1887 he set out “on … Continue reading
