Western Rails: 1938 Odyssey

This circa 1938 silent reel, Western Railroad Trip, captures a grand journey across the American West in black-and-white 16mm. From a moving train, it pans the rugged West—Grand Canyon’s Rim Drive with old tour buses, Colorado’s rivers, and Tennessee Pass on the Denver & Rio Grande Western RR. Farewells unfold at a platform, followed by a steamship voyage on the President Coolidge. In San Francisco, cable cars climb Powell Street, a POV peers from the front window, and Fisherman’s Wharf bustles with crab stands and boats like Famiglia Piazza. A picnic flashes by, alongside Pasadena’s steam locomotive arrival, Chinatown’s dim streets, and an Art Deco Standard station. Aerials from a prop-spinning plane reveal Mount Shasta and Mount Diablo, while Mount Rainier’s Narada Falls and CCC camp sign mark a Pacific Northwest detour. Salt Lake City’s Mormon Temple glints from a car, tying this unedited travelogue together.