1928 Go This Winter to Florida! All America's Playground - Dixie Flyer Route
DESCRIPTION
A spectacular survivor from the golden age of Florida tourism, this colorful 1928 advertisement sold snowbound Chicagoans the irresistible promise of palm trees, beaches, golf, and sunshine aboard the famous Dixie Flyer passenger train. Published at the height of the prosperity and optimism of the Roaring Twenties, it appeared less than a year before the 1929 stock market crash brought the decade to an abrupt end and ushered in the Great Depression.
Chicago to Florida by Rail
Published in the Chicago Sunday Tribune on December 16, 1928, this full-page advertisement promotes winter travel aboard the Dixie Flyer Route, operated through a network of railroads including the Chicago & Eastern Illinois, Louisville & Nashville, and Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis. The route carried travelers south through Evansville, Nashville, Chattanooga, and Atlanta before continuing toward Jacksonville and Florida's Atlantic and Gulf Coast resorts.
Across the top, the advertisement announces that the “All-New Dixie Flyer” and “All-New, All-Pullman Dixie Limited” would make their first trips to Florida on January 1, placing it immediately before the debut of the newly equipped trains. Florida is promoted as “All America's Playground,” with colorful illustrations of fashionable vacationers beneath palm trees surrounded by scenes of deep-sea fishing at St. Petersburg, golf, resort hotels, historic St. Augustine, and fashionable East Coast society. The journey itself was part of the attraction, with passengers encouraged to visit Chattanooga, Chickamauga, Lookout Mountain, Moccasin Bend, and other destinations along the way.
Selling the Good Life
Appearing near the end of Florida's extraordinary 1920s tourism boom and less than a year before the stock-market crash, the advertisement captures the decade's enthusiasm for leisure travel and Florida's emergence as a playground for northern vacationers. The reverse carries an equally evocative full-page Canada Dry advertisement, featuring a family gathered around the Christmas tree and promoting Canada Dry Pale Ginger Ale as “The Champagne of Ginger Ales.” Explicitly depicting Christmas afternoon, December 25, 1928, the verso makes this an unusually attractive piece of pre-Depression Era advertising on both sides.
CONDITION
1200 W. 35th Street #425 Chicago, IL 60609 | P: (312) 496 - 3622