DESCRIPTION: Rare and fine eleven-page brochure for Western Air Express published in 1929, just three and one-half years after the airline was founded. Includes six pictorial airline route maps or cartographs by famed illustrator Ruth Taylor White. Maps with inset half-tone images of aircraft and flight operations.
The Western Air Express Corporation, later Western Airlines, began its first passenger service in 1926 touting speed, comfort, and dependability. By 1928, employing Fokker Super Tri-motor passenger aircraft capable of transporting twelve passengers at a blistering 125 MPH, the airline "carried about eighteen percent of all inter-city passengers in the United States." In 1928 the company initiated a seaplane route from Catalina Island, California to Los Angeles, California. Maps include:
- San Francisco - Los Angeles. 365 miles, 3 hours. "The Worlds Model Air Line." Two facing sheets, each 7.5" x 8"
- Los Angeles - Kansas City. 1,417 miles - 12 hours. First and fastest all Daylight Passenger Airway." Two facing sheets each 7.5" x 8".
- Los Angeles to Catalina. 45 miles - 30 minutes. "Over land and sea. The first air passenger service in the United States. Single center-fold sheet 15" x 8".
Los Angeles to Tia Juana or Agua Caliente". 116 miles - 1 hour. With above.
- Los Angeles - Salt Lake City. 600 miles - 6 hours. "Over the Old Mormon Trail". Two facing sheets each 7.5" x 8".
- Map of the USA showing expected travel-time zones, indicated by color legend. No title. One half sheet.
- B&W inset map showing location of the Western Air Express Terminal south of San Gabriel. No title.
- Cover 8" x 9" showing all included passenger routes for Western Air Express.
Publication date noted within as October, 1929. Folds down to 4" x 9".
Ruth Taylor White (1896 - 1985)
Ruth Taylor White was among the most prolific makers of pictographic maps or cartographs during the classic period of pictorial map making in the United States, the 1920's, 1930's, and 1940's. Taylor White’s ‘cartographs’ (as she called them) were characterized by bobble-headed cartoon characters across colorful, attractive landscapes. Despite their visual richness and vigor, White's cartographs resort to stereotyping with regard to culture, ethnicity, gender and class and their points of contrast to 21st century culture is a reminder. That said, White's pictorial maps combine graphic style, color and comical observation and are drawn in the same style of Jo Mora's works of the same period
PUBLICATION DATE: 1929
GEOGRAPHIC AREA: United States
BODY OF WATER: Pacific Ocean
CONDITION: Very good.
Cover with a 1.25" x 3.5" brown paper overlay at top left, likely intended for an ink stamp. Clean and bright with only light wear on the folds Two-inch clean tear on one sheet expertly and invisibly repaired with archival tape.
NOTE: Maps may be printed on verso of sheet(s) containing another map.
COLORING:
ENGRAVER:
SIZE: 8
" x
15 "
ITEM PHYSICAL LOCATION: 14
PRICE: $1200
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