America’s Summer Resorts [Title on Verso]

America’s Summer Resorts aboard the New York Central Lines.

This early 20th-century vacation map was published by the Poole Brothers in 1908 on behalf of the New York Central Lines. According to promotional text in the lower right, the company operated “about 14,000 miles of railway east of Chicago, St. Louis and Cincinnati” and hope to encourage ridership by issuing this promotional brochure.

Vibrant red lines highlight the routes in operation across the Northeastern and Midwestern United States, though the map extends as far west as Colorado. With no scale to determine exact distances, the image is truncated so that the distance from Denver to St. Louis is about equal to the length between Buffalo and Albany!

Dozens of health and pleasure resorts are noted with red dots, while circles indicate the location of information bureaus and ticket offices of the New York Central. Descriptive text on the verso offers information about various locations of interest and recommended tours, with the following long-winded introduction:

“This folder is intended to briefly touch upon a few of the great health and pleasure resorts reached by the magnificent through trains of the New York Central Lines, and if a perusal of these pages in connection with the map on the reverse side – which is believed to be the most complete and comprehensive of any map ever issued embracing this territory – shall add to your stock of information concerning the localities mentioned, or shall induce you to embrace one or more of them in your vacation trip, or contribute in any way to the pleasure of your summer outing, it will have fulfilled its mission and accomplished the result intended.”

Source.