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Aeroplane View of Glacier National Park. “See America First,” Great Northern Railway. National Park Route.
St. Paul, Minnesota: McGill-Warner Co., [ca. 1915]. 8vo (9” x 4”) brochure. Color-printed outer panels and 14 panels of text and illustrations, color-printed bird’s eye view on verso, 16.25” x 30” plus margins. CONDITION: Good, .5” x 1” loss to lower-right margin of map, a small puncture in the upper-right margin, a few minor separations along center old fold. A bird’s-eye view of Glacier National Park published by the Great Northern Railway shortly after the establishment of the park in 1910. This “aeroplane view” plays to the public interest in aviation in the 1910s before passenger flight became common in the ‘20s. Shown here are the park’s mountains, roads, glaciers, valleys, bodies of water, and forests, many of which are labeled. The Great Northern Railway—the means by which many tourists reached the park—passes through the lower part of the view, extending from Glacier Park Hotel to Belton Chalets, and following the general course of the Flathead River. Details of the map relevant to tourism include a network of roads and trails—some of which traverse lakes and rivers, and thus involved canoeing—along with hotels, resorts, camps, and Swiss-style chalets built by the Great Northern Railway throughout the park. The text covers the park’s scenic attractions and notes that the map “conveys but a faint idea of the wonderful beauty of its lakes, and the impressive grandeur of its mountains.” Accompanying photo-illustrations picture tourists fishing and traveling via automobile, stage coach, and horseback; Two Medicine Camp; New Glacier Park Hotel; and Going-to-the-Sun Camp on St. Mary Lake. Information on travel options and tours is included as well. “The Great Northern Railway was created in September 1889 from several predecessor railroads in Minnesota and eventually stretched from Lake Superior at Duluth and Minneapolis/St. Paul west through North Dakota, Montana and Northern Idaho to Washington State at Everett and Seattle. Headquarters for the line were located in St. Paul, Minnesota” (“Great Northern History”). OCLC records five copies, at Yale, University of Chicago, University of Wyoming Library, Harvard, and University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. The present edition of this map appears to have been preceded by Aeroplane view of Glacier National Park: supplement to Travel, April 1913 (Chicago: Poole Brothers, ca. 1913). REFERENCES: “Great Northern History” at Great Northern Railway Historical Society online; Rumsey 8707.
Item #8205
Price: $450.00
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