[Western Travel]. [Railroads]

Memories of the Trip and of Associates on the Red Special [cover title]

[Various locations in the American Southwest, West Coast, and Pacific Northwest: 1925]. [30] leaves, illustrated with 270 photographs of various sizes, including two multi-panel panoramic photographs, each leaf with a single printed caption identifying the subjects or location. Contemporary red leather, gilt titles on front cover. Oblong folio. Some scuffing and abrading to covers, a few short edge tears. Internally clean. Very good. Item #4849

A handsome annotated photograph album produced to commemorate a railroad trip by a well-to-do party of travelers from Kansas City through New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, California, and up the West Coast to British Columbia and Alberta in 1925. The first photograph in the album is a panorama of a large group of well-dressed men and women at the Mission Hills Country Club in Kansas City, captioned in the negative, indicating the traveling party emanated from Kansas City as part of the "N.E.L.A. Red Special Delegation to San Francisco Convention" who were "Guests of K.C.P and L Co," presumably the Kansas City Power & Light Company. The second and much larger panoramic photograph is comprised of fifteen 5-x-8-inch photographs picturing the travelers posed outside the numerous Pullman cars that comprise the Red Special. The preponderance of the photographs are organized by location, generally five or six photographs per page, with a single printed caption per page, mostly indicating the location. The body of photographs begins with facing pages of images featuring the travelers and some scenery in Colorado Springs and Garden of the Gods in Colorado. A sampling of subsequent groups of photographs feature the travelers at Pike's Peak, Albuquerque, the Grand Canyon, San Bernardino, Redlands, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Del Monte, Yosemite Valley, Glacier Point, Mariposa Grove, San Francisco, Shasta, the Columbia River, Victoria, Vancouver, Canadian Rockies, Lake Louise, Lake Agnes, Moraine Lake, Johnson's Canyon, Banff, and other locations. The album closes with four pages of photos picturing "Fellow Travelers Here and There" and a group photo of "The Train Crew." The latter photograph is the only one featuring African Americans, who were likely working as Pullman porters on the Red Special. A wide-ranging series of photographs featuring much of the American and Canadian West before the Great Depression.

Price: $1,250.00