Southern Pacific’s book for the Overland Route contained just 46 photos. But it had a title page, a forward, a map, and a list of other photo books in the series, all of which suggest this copy was issued later than the ones we’ve seen in the past few days.

Click image to download a 19.8-MB PDF of this 52-page book.

But we don’t have to rely on those indicators, as this book is also the first that names E.W. Clapp, rather than F.S. McGinnis, as SP’s passenger traffic manager. Clapp started this job in 1931 and only lasted about three years before being replaced by a J.T. Monroe in 1934. Thus, this book must have been issued sometime between 1931 and 1933. I’m inclined on the former year as I imagine that the Depression soon killed this line of photo books. Continue reading →

This book has 74 black-and-white photos and two Maurice Logan paintings. Unlike the previous books shown here, the Logan painting on the front cover doesn’t wrap around to the back. Instead, the front cover shows a New Orleans scene while the back cover shows a Native American woman and her baby, probably in Arizona or southern California.

Click image to download a 29.1-MB PDF of this 84-page book.

Unlike the previous two books presented here, this one has a title page. This makes me think it was published after the California and Shasta books. The title page reveals that SP sold the books for “One Dollar a Copy,” which is close to $19 in today’s money. This was probably reasonable for many of the people who could afford to right Southern Pacific’s overnight trains. The title page also says the book was “printed by Sunset Press,” but that could still mean that Sterling Engraving, which printed images of the cover painting of the California book, printed the covers that were then bound to the contents. Continue reading →

This book features the Shasta Route between Portland and the Bay Area. The stunning cover painting by Maurice Logan shows bald eagles flying over the forests in front of Mount Shasta. Like yesterday’s book, this one has no title page or forward. While yesterday’s book had 74 photos, this one has 65.

Click image to download a 26.4-MB PDF of this 76-page book.

After the photos, the book also presents a map of the United States showing major Southern Pacific routes. The map invites people to send 25 cents to F.S. McGinnis, SP’s passenger traffic manager, to get “this map in full colors” printed at 23″x32″. The David Rumsey Collection has a copy of this map as shown below. In addition to being in color, its size makes it much more readable than the map in the books, revealing that the map itself is surrounded by images representing the history of the Southern Pacific. Continue reading →

In the early 20th century, a writer named Elbert Hubbard wrote a series of volumes titled Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, one of whom was James J. Hill. It may be in reference to these books that this lengthy 1928 booklet is titled A Little Journey Through the Lower Valley of the Rio Grande. The journey turns out to be not so little, and the booklet is made extra weighty by the fact that it has two covers: a slightly oversized outer cover plus an inner cover made from the same heavy green paper but cut to the slightly smaller but still respectable (7.3″x10.4″) size of the interior pages.

Click image to download a 34.4-MB PDF of this 72-page booklet.

Even after deducting these double covers, the booklet still has 64 pages, which is about twice too many. The text was written by Julia Cameron Montgomery (1872-1935), who was born in Alabama but lived most of her life in Texas. She previously wrote a 1913 book about Houston and the Rice Institute (now Rice University) and also wrote a short booklet about Texas’ grapefruit production. Continue reading →