Our American Riviera

This Burlington brochure encourages people to take the Texas Zephyr and connecting Sam Houston Zephyr to “Our American Riviera,” meaning the Gulf Coast. The brochure describes Brownsville, Corpus Christi, Galveston, Houston, New Orleans, and San Antonio, even though none of these but Houston are served by the zephyrs and none but Houston and Galveston are even on the Ft. Worth & Denver Railway.

Click image to download a 4.6-MB PDF of this brochure.

A map in the brochure shows Burlington lines extending north from Denver to Billings, connecting there to Great Northern and Northern Pacific lines to Seattle and Portland. The Southern Pacific/Union Pacific line from San Francisco to Cheyenne is also on the map, but–oddly–the map fails to emphasize the California Zephyr route.

Despite all these routes, Burlington’s market for people going to “our Riviera” must have been small. People from Seattle would have to change trains at least three times (four if they went over the Great Northern) to get to any destination on the Gulf Coast other than Houston. So basically the brochure was for Denver and other Colorado residents.


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