Greetings list:
I'm looking for information on the CB&Q/NP/GN tour packages that operated in
the West under the name Burlington Escorted Tours. Basic questions are when
this program began and how it evolved. I have a 1903 Burlington promotional
guide for "personally conducted excursions" from Boston to California which
says the CB&Q had been offering escorted tours for "a few years." Another
document shows the Q was doing tourist-travel promotion at least as early as
the 1890s. Anyone have any background they can share? Fred Harvey and the
Santa Fe got rich with tourist promotions begun about that time. Did the Q
follow their lead?
Mainly I'm interested in the 1941 season, the last before the attack on Pearl
Harbor curtailed pleasure travel. (Sound familiar?) The tours hit the usual
spots from Colorado Springs up through Rocky Mountain, Yellowstone and
Glacier National Parks and into Canada at Waterton, the Grand Canyon and the
West Coast from LA to the Northwest and Alaska.
My father worked as an escort that last summer, so I'm trying to flesh out
his memories. Particularly helpful would be names of other escorts of that
era, information on the tour headquarters in Chicago at 75 West Jackson St.,
and accounts from passengers and crew especially as they relate to the
escorts. Also anything on R. S. Caird, manager of Burlington Escorted Tours
in the Chicago office. (Note I'm assuming there were no tours in 1942. Dad
doesn't think there were, but he got drafted just in time to spend that
summer in south Texas.)
Thanks for any help.
Bill Diven
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