The Burlington used this photo of a tour boat on St. Mary Lake in front of the Going to the Sun Chalets on blotters and a postcard. Burlington also used this style of menu with a painting of Rocky Mountain National Park on the cover.

Click image to download an 705-KB PDF of this menu.

Based on text on the back, I dated the Rocky Mountain Park menu to 1936. Today’s menu has rail fares to Glacier Park on the back that could probably be used to date it, but I don’t have a complete set of timetables (which usually include fares) to date it.

However, the back cover also urges tourists to take the Vacation Special from Glacier Park to points east via the Big Horn Mountains. Vacation Special was the name of Burlington’s Kansas City-Billings trains 41 & 42 in 1935 and 1936. In 1937, Burlington changed the name to the Adventureland. Timetables from 1934 and before don’t indicate a train name. That dates this menu to 1935 or 1936. The menu has prices identical to the Rocky Mountain Park menu, so I’m dating it to 1936.

This June, 1936 photo of the Vacation Special was taken by Otto Perry near Edgemont, South Dakota. Click image for a larger view.

I am pretty sure that the boat in the picture is the M.V. St. Mary, a 66-foot vessel built in 1913. Later St. Mary Lake tour boats were smaller and did not have a visible smokestack. The St. Mary was moved to Flathead Lake after World War II and lost in a fire in 1961. The only photo I could find of the boat was poor quality, but it shows a smokestack and window pattern similar to the one in the photo on this menu.