“There is enough agricultural land in the cutover section of northern Minnesota to make 25,000 new farms,” this 1946 booklet quotes someone as saying. The state hoped to resettle people into that area, much of which was served by the Northern Pacific.

Click image to download a 23.0-MB PDF of this 34-page booklet from the NPRHA Vista-Dome Package.

I don’t have any data, but I strongly suspect that most of these lands did not become farms. In fact, as nationwide farm productivities increased, the trend was for marginal farmlands to be restored to forest lands. Continue reading →

This booklet describes itself as “a revised edition of Through the Fertile Northwest,” which was presented here a few days ago. That booklet was published in 1926 and contained 24 pages; this was is dated 1944 and has just 20 pages. Despite the 18-year separation, both publications use some of the same text and even share a few photos.

Click image to download a 15.9-MB PDF of this 20-page booklet from the NPRHA Vista-Dome Package.

Based on the title, I imagined that the newer booklet would have suggested criteria people could use for selecting one region over the others. Instead, it is simply upbeat about everything. Readers might not even realize that North Dakota and eastern Montana suffer from particularly harsh, dry climates; that western Oregon and Washington have plenty of water for growing crops but also a depressing lack of sunshine; or that eastern Oregon and Washington might have been ideal for people who could afford a farm that has irrigation rights but a calamity for those who couldn’t.

Dated 1937, today’s apple booklet includes 40 recipes that are laid out in an easier-to-read format than the 1915 and 1931 apple recipe booklets presented here, with the ingredients listed first followed by instructions. Other parts of the booklet benefit from some white space and two-column format, making it more inviting and easier to read than earlier editions.

Click image to download a 6.5-MB PDF of this 28-page booklet from the NPRHA Vista-Dome Package.

Prior to the recipes, the booklet argues that “Northwest apples are superior.” This is because the Northwest has “a greater share of the requisites for flavor, size, color and nutritive values in apples than have other sections” including more sunlight and dependable water supplies (thanks to irrigation). Continue reading →

The booklet makes the interesting argument that eggs from the Pacific Northwest are “good eggs” because they are grown and sorted to higher standards than eggs from other parts of the country. Grocery buyers in the East, the booklet suggests, should prefer Northwest eggs over those grown more local to their communities. Crucial to this argument is NP’s promise of fast delivery of eggs and other perishables across the country.

Click image to download a 8.2-MB PDF of this 32-page booklet from the NPRHA Vista-Dome Package.

For consumers, the booklet also includes sixty egg recipes written by Northern Pacific dietician Edna Zantiz and someone named tLillian Clark. This booklet isn’t dated, but a map on the first interior page is dated 1928. However, the list of agents on the inside back cover matches those in 1929 timetables.