As today is the last “unofficial” day of summer here in the United States (it’s Labor Day), some of us are already dreading the upcoming autumn and winter.
That’s why I completely appreciate all of the ads for vacations to warm climates that were featured in the July 1910 issue of Good Housekeeping. (Although Atlantic City is not exactly a winter destination, but I suppose they were planning ahead for the next New Jersey beach season.) The graphics and text on some of these vintage ads are great and I wanted to share them with you.
California – Thousands of Attractions for Tourist and Settler.
The first ad is for California – “Every outdoor pastime the year ’round.”. It looks like you could take a train there using the Southern Pacific Sunset Route, going from New Orleans to San Francisco. The journey there is described as including “Trains of Superior Equipment – rock ballast roadbeds, Automatic Block Signals, Oil Burning Locomotives, Scenic Surprises at Every Turn.”
Chalfonte Hotel, Atlantic City
Up next is the Chalfonte Hotel. As I said earlier, Atlantic City is definitely not a place for a beach vacation in January, but at least the hotel was advertising itself to people planning ahead for the summer. The ad is a very simple one; the only words it contains are:
Chalfonte
Atlantic City, NJ
The Leeds Company
Always Open – On the beach
However, if you’re curious about what the hotel was like and what happened to it in general, I found an excellent article here that tells all about it. In brief, it opened with 10 stories as Atlantic City’s first skyscraper in 1904, and was billed as being fireproof. It sounds very modern with many different amenities. Sadly, though, it was demollished in 1980.
Pinehurst, NC – The Centre of Winter Out-of-Door Life in the Middle South.
Pinehurst, North Carolina was described here as being “Free from climatic extremes, and wholesome in every respect.” It sounds like it was quite a place! The ad lists some of the features you will find there, and they include: “The only resort having THREE GOLD COURSES, all in pink of condition, country club, 40,000 acre private shooting preserve, good guides, trained dogs, fine livery of saddle horses, model dairy, tennis courts, trap shooting, etc. Four excellent hotels – 52 cottages.” If you are not familiar with Pinehurst today, a quick internet search will show that it is now a well-known and historic golf resort, using the slogan “The Cradle of American Golf.”
Again, information on the railroad was provided for the traveler. To get to Pinehurst in 1910, you could take the Pullman Service from New York. But the trip was “only one night out from New York, Boston, Cleveland, Pittsburg and Cincinatti.”
I love finding these old ads for travel, especially when there is enough information to compare the locations to how they are today. A 100 year old add may actually inspire a future trip!
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