Santa Fe Calendar History
The earliest calendar produced by the Santa Fe Railway appears to be an 1899 edition referred to as the "Aztec" calendars for a depiction of the ancient Aztec calendar on the cover. These were produced as two separate six month calendar sets that covered July 1899 to December and January 1900 to July 1900. Both sets depicted the same six images of Native Americans by artist E. A. Burbank and copyrighted by the Pencil and Brush Company of Chicago in 1899. The artists' subjects are that of Native American Indians from various tribes of Arizona and New Mexico. The sets consisted of seven individual pages; a cover with the Aztec calendar then six months of calendars with images bound by string through two holes at the top and are approximately 10 3/4" x 8". These are extremely rare and I've only seen these two and another set to reference.
The 1900 set included here were discovered in Harry J. Briscoe's papers with an attached memo dated July 21, 1934 from a C. J. Birchfield to a Mr. Seagraves thanking him for the calendars. HJB does not recognize either of these names and cannot recall how these came to his possession.
(HJB's career with ATSF began in 1937). The 1899 set was obtained in 2020.
The next period in the Santa Fe Railways calendar evolution came in 1907 with the publication of a calendar titled "Everywhere Southwest and California" and advertising the 'California Limited Exclusively for First Class Travel'. On the bottom or calendar portion is printed "Grand Canyon of Arizona the World Wonder." The border is difficult to forget as it incorporates 4 swastikas which various North American Indian tribes used in their designs each tribe having a different meaning.
1908 & 1909 shared the same graphics with the only difference being the calendar year/date portion. The 1908 calendar began a 5 year period of either designs or photographs of various Native American objects.
1908 &1909 had an Indian graphic design with 'Visit the Grand Canyon'.
1910 used a photograph of pottery that contained the Santa Fe logo and 1911 a photograph of an Indian basket design with the Santa Fe logo.
(The dates of these two were verified by an article in the
March 1913 edition of the Santa Fe Magazine.)
1912 is a representation of a portion of a Navajo blanket weaving depicting Santa Fe trains that were apparently added to the blanket image by
Santa Fe graphics department.
In 1913 an Indian jewelry photograph was used on a background of a weaving. (References to these calendars and their corresponding dates is confirmed by an article in the Santa Fe company magazine of March 1913.)
1914 is the first time the Santa Fe Railway used its extensive collection of southwestern art in a calendar depiction with the only exception to this coming the following year.
In 1915 the company diverted from the artwork motif and published 2 calendars under the heading
"Two Fairs - One Fare" to celebrate and advertise the
Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco (also referred to as the World's Fair) and the Panama-California Exposition in San Diego.
The San Diego image showed a gondola against the background of a mission style building and the San Francisco image showed a steam ship against a background of the fair grounds.
From 1916 to 1993 the Santa Fe Railway used lithographs of artwork from the company’s extensive art collection, with the exception of no calendars being issued for 1919 and 1920 when the U. S. government took control of all railway operations in the United States during WWI.
(Though the war ended in 1918 the federal government did not return control of the railroad to the company until 1920.)
Another interesting discovery are the borders around the images
that have appeared through the years.
In 1916 a graphic border of Native American symbols surrounded the image and continued until 1922 with the exception of 1918. Then in 1924 a thin colored line border was used against the image with a wider contrasting color to the edge. This continued until 1942 when the thin color border was replaced with a thin white border and continued in that format until 1970 when all borders were removed and the image extended to the edge.
E. I. Couse was by far the most prolific contributor of calendar artwork, the company using 23 pieces of his work on 26 occasions.
During the 86 years of calendar production the company duplicated 5 pieces of artwork sometimes using a different title for the piece.
1921 was used again in 1963;
1926 was used again in 1965;
1930 was used again in 1964;
1942 was used again in 1967;
and
1945 was used again in 1975.
The Santa Fe's collection of art is a wonder in itself.
A good portion of the artwork was commissioned for use on the calendars often requesting the artist to redo a particular piece of work in a size that would better fit the dimensions of the calendar so when you tour the collection at BNSF's headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas you frequently see different examples of the same subject in two different sizes.
The production of these special calendars ceased in 1993 as a cost savings effort by then Santa Fe Railway CEO, Rob Krebs. The company was in tough financial straits at the time and he felt he could no longer justify the expenditure. Numerous letters to save the program (including one from a now retired Harry J. Briscoe) failed to convince Mr. Krebs to allow the program to survive.
The collection is currently on display at the Galveston Railroad Museum in Galveston, Texas
https://galvestonrrmuseum.org/
The "Aztec" calendars
July to December 1899
January to June 1900
Click on image to enlarge.
Click on Image to enlarge.
