Prickly Pear Canyon Breakfast Menu

Posted on by March 25, 2025
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In 1887, James J. Hill oversaw the construction of 643 miles of railway from Minot to Helena. This was the most miles of railroad ever built in a single season from one end of track and is one of Hill’s greatest achievements. Hill decided to build from Minot west rather than from both ends to avoid having to pay Northern Pacific rates that he considered exorbitant for transporting rails and other supplies to the west end.

Click image to download a 393-KB PDF of this menu from the New York Public Library.

Only someone with Hill’s organizational and managerial skills could have accomplished this feat. As Hill wrote an associate, “I have been up at the front, and I find it pays to be where the money is being spent.” Continue reading →

Great Northern Mount Rainier Breakfast Menu

Posted on by March 25, 2025
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This menu is undated but the New York Public Library says that Frances Buttolph collected it in 1901. Inflation since then means prices in today’s dollars are almost 40 times the prices shown on the menu. Thus, a cup of coffee, tea, or cocoa at 10¢ would be about $3.95 today. A tenderloin steak at 60¢ would be about $23 today.

Click image to download a 220-KB PDF of this menu from the New York Public Library.

The menu includes oatmeal and “California breakfast food,” which was made from “California white wheat” and was advertised to be “superior to oatmeal.” It also includes eggs and hot cakes, but most of the menu is dedicated to various meats ranging from a half order of sausage for 20¢ to sirloin steak for 70¢. Continue reading →

Blanket Weaver Menu

Posted on by March 25, 2025
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This menu with the Santa Fe logo and Fred Harvey name on the cover is doubly rare. First, though we’ve seen 16 different paintings from the Santa Fe collection used on various menus, I’ve found five paintings in this series, one of the Grand Canyon by William Robinson Leigh and the other four paintings of Indian craftsmen by Eanger Irving Couse. Second, Fred Harvey must have used these for only a couple of years as I haven’t seen many for sale and only have two of the five in my collection. This one is from the Texas Compound collection.

Click image to download a 1.0-MB PDF of this menu from the Texas Compound collection.

The page on Santa Fe menu series shows that during the 1950s menus had a horizontal fold (making them wider than they are tall), which was ideal for displaying paintings on the cover as most paintings are in landscape format. In about 1962, Santa Fe/Fred Harvey began using menus with a vertical fold (taller than wide), which left a lot of white space on the covers and still required them to crop parts of the cover paintings out. Continue reading →

Grand Canyon Limited Stationery

Posted on by March 25, 2025
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The Grand Canyon Limited, Santa Fe trains 23 and 24, is among the trains whose owning railroad would have liked to discontinue but couldn’t get permission to do so before Amtrak took over in 1971. Wikipedia suggests (without a source) that Santa Fe might not have joined Amtrak and continued running its Chiefs and San Diegans, but it didn’t want the obligation of running the money-losing trains 23 and 24 for another five years, as it would have been required to do if it hadn’t joined Amtrak. If true, that’s too bad because Santa Fe would have set a standard for transcontinental service that Amtrak would have had to meet.

Click image to download an 473-KB PDF of this letterhead.

As it was, the name Grand Canyon Limited lasted only until 1968, when Santa Fe stopped running trains into Grand Canyon National Park. After that, it was known simply as trains 23 and 24. Despite being well into the streamlined era, the train continued to include heavyweight equipment and in its last years didn’t even have sleeping or dining cars over the entire distance between Chicago and California: a lunch counter car went from Chicago to Barstow and a sleeping car went from Barstow to Los Angeles. Continue reading →

Santa Fe June 1954 Timetable

Posted on by March 25, 2025
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A back-cover ad on this timetable lists ten Fred Harvey hotels and restaurants, including three each in Arizona and New Mexico and one each in California, Illinois, Kansas, and Missouri. Of course, Fred Harvey had more restaurants at the time, but these were the ones located in or next to passenger stations served by the Santa Fe.

Click image to download a 34.3-MB PDF of this 48-page timetable, scans for which were contributed by Tim Zukas.

This menu has lost 20 pages from the one shown here a few days ago. The difference is mainly fluff: today’s has fewer full-page ads, fewer maps, and cuts condensed schedules down from 18 to 7 pages. Both timetables show 90 different schedules including several pages of local and mixed trains. Two transcontinental trains, the Scout and once-revered California Limited, are gone, but the San Francisco Chief has replaced the Scout as trains 1 & 2.

“Tickets, Please”

Posted on by May 16, 2025
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This booklet purports to tell “the history of the great trains on the Santa Fe . . . from yesterday to today.” Apparently freight trains weren’t “great” as it is just about passenger trains. It also starts in 1830, decades before the Santa Fe ran its first train in 1869. When it does get to Santa Fe history, it has four pages about locomotives, special trains such as the Scott Special, dining services, and Harvey girls before it gets to any “great trains.”

Click image to download a 3.2-MB PDF of this 16-page booklet.

Readers have to make it to page 8 to find the first description of a regularly scheduled Santa Fe train, the California Limited. Page 10 presents the Santa Fe de-Luxe, including illustrations from a 1913 brochure about the train. Page 12 has the Chief and page 13 the first Super Chief, a Diesel-powered heavyweight train. Pages 14 and 15 bring readers up to the then-modern era of the daily streamlined Super Chief, Chief, and El Capitan and the still-heavyweight Grand Canyon and California Limited. Continue reading →

El Tovar Dinner Menus

Posted on by March 25, 2025
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These two menus were issued four years apart in 1949 and 1953, yet are similar in many ways aside from the cover. Both have a similar variety of entrées on the table d’hôte side, including fish, omelette, calves liver, and turkey, though the 1949 menu has one more entrée. Both have a sirloin or tenderloin steak on the a la carte side even though the steak came with potatoes, salad, and dinner rolls. Both have a similar variety of other foods on the a la carte side.

Click image to download a 1.3-MB PDF of this 1949 menu from the New York Public Library.

According to the consumer price index, inflation reduced the value of the dollar by 12 percent between 1949 and 1953, but these menus don’t really indicate that. The steak went up in price from $3.75 to $4.00 (about $48 today), but other entrées on both the a la carte and table d’hôte sides stay the same prices. A few minor items such as orange juice and vanilla ice cream increased in price by a nickel. Continue reading →

Fred Harvey 1949 La Fonda Dinner Menu

Posted on by March 25, 2025
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With the exception of El Tovar, I think of the La Fonda as the most luxurious of Fred Harvey’s hotels, but maybe because it is the only one I’ve been to that has been in continuous operation for over a century. This menu was used 27 years after it opened and 22 years after it was purchased by the Santa Fe Railway and leased to Fred Harvey, which operated it until 1969.

Click image to download a 1.2-MB PDF of this menu from the Texas Compound collection.

This has a table d’hôte menu with seven different entrées ranging from eggs Benedictine for $2.25 (about $30 in today’s money) to New England lobster grill for $4.50 (about $60 today). Each of the entrées came with appetizer or soup, potatoes and vegetables, salad, dessert, and beverage. Continue reading →

September 1946 Santa Fe Timetable

Posted on by March 25, 2025
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On September 29, 1946, Santa Fe began offering “the first and only daily ⁠39-3/4-hour service between Chicago and California.” It did so by increasing its fleet of Super Chief and El Capitan trains so that a Super Chief would leave Chicago and Los Angeles on even-numbered days of the month while an El Capitan would leave on odd-numbered days rather than just two days a week as it had been before that date.

Click image to download a 46.8-MB PDF of this 68-page timetable, scans for which were contributed by Tim Zukas.

As noted in the fine print in an ad on page 2 of this timetable, it wasn’t quite a daily service as Santa Fe didn’t have enough equipment to run an El Capitan on both the 31st of a month and 1st of the next month, so it didn’t run either train on the 31st. It doesn’t say what would happen on February 28, but perhaps that was an issue for a later timetable. Continue reading →

Two Eminent Artists

Posted on by March 25, 2025
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We’ve previously seen two menus in what Fred Harvey called its “eminent artist’s series,” one featuring a painting by Diego Rivera and the other with a painting by Dale Nichols. Here are two more, one of which is also by Diego Rivera while the other is by Thomas Hart Benton.

Click image to download a 802-KB PDF of this menu from the Texas Compound collection.

Rivera‘s artistic style is often called social realism as it is intended to make a political point. As a communist, Rivera would soon become too controversial to glorify on a menu cover, but in 1946 when this menu was issued the Soviet Union was still nominally our ally. This dinner menu was used at the Fray Marcos Hotel, which was part of the Santa Fe passenger depot in Williams, Arizona. Continue reading →