The map in this brochure shows the location of roughly 750 forts, camps, fields, bases, and stations in the then-48 states. The other side of the brochure lists all of those installations by name along with the nearest train station. This might have been useful to military personnel wanting to know where they were going and even more to families wanting to know where their sons were training or stationed.

Click image to download a 13.0-MB PDF of this brochure, which is from the David Rumsey Map Collection.

“Business and vacation travel have not been encouraged, as our passenger trains now have a most important and much greater task to perform,” says the brochure. “Hundreds of thousands of men and women in Uncle Sam’s service must be trans­ported.” The Union Pacific, the brochure vows, is “keeping ’em rolling for Victory!”

With close to 650,000 residents (as of 2021), Las Vegas is the nation’s 25th-largest city. But in 1939, when Union Pacific issued this brochure, it had barely 8,000 residents, making it “still a frontier town,” according to this brochure. The completion of Boulder/Hoover dam just three years before (along with the invention of air conditioning) enabled the city to rapidly grow into one of the nation’s leading entertainment centers.

Click image to download a 19.6-MB PDF of this brochure, which is from the David Rumsey Map Collection.

The colorful map in this brochure includes cute pictures of yellow Union Pacific streamliners, a couple getting a divorce at the Clark County Courthouse, and even a scantily clad woman enticing a man to enter her doorway over which is mounted a red light. The map barely hints at casinos or gambling but instead focuses more on natural resources such as Red Rock Canyon, Death Valley, Zion, and of course Boulder Dam. Similarly, the photo collage on the back has one picture of a roulette table and 18 of scenery, a rodeo, and the dam.

The map and cover art are signed Raymond Winters, who was born in Denver in 1892 and moved to Los Angeles in 1915. As an artist, he often illustrated the covers of Westway magazine, which then as now was published by the Automobile Club of Southern California. Sadly, he died in 1939, the same year this brochure was published.

At 726 feet, Boulder Dam was the tallest in the world when it was completed. Although it wasn’t formally done until 1936, it was dedicated by President Roosevelt in September, 1935. Union Pacific published this brochure just one month later. The dam was a source of pride for Americans, and for Union Pacific it was a source of revenue as most of the construction materials were brought in by rail.

Click image to download a 19.6-MB PDF of this brochure.

The name “Boulder Dam” is a misnomer as a dam was originally proposed for Boulder Canyon but ended up being built in Black Canyon. The 1928 law authorizing a dam “at Black Canyon or Boulder Canyon” was called the Boulder Canyon Project Act, but didn’t name the dam. When construction began in 1930, the Secretary of the Interior declared it should be named after President Hoover, who was an engineer himself. But when Roosevelt became president, the Democrats didn’t want to finish a dam named after a defeated opponent, so insisted it be called Boulder Dam. In 1947, however, Congress declared that it should be named Hoover Dam. Continue reading →