Tag: Outdoors

1957 Airventure Guide to Hawaii

An abnormally warm winter this year in Minnesota has had the state’s inhabitants thinking of springtime two months early, and among the places Minnesotans have loved to visit on Spring Break, the islands of Hawaii have been a long time favorite. And NWA was taking Northlanders all the way there since the end of 1948:

Center fold illustration from Northwest’s December 1, 1948 system timetable.

Initial services started with just three weekly roundtrips using Douglas DC-4 equipment, but NWA would route the double-deck Boeing 377 Stratocruiser to Honolulu in the early 1950s, and the Douglas DC-6 in the late 1950s.

Northwest had already applied for Tokyo – Honolulu – Los Angeles route authority in the late 1940s, but it would take another twenty years for that dream to be realized.

We recently picked up this little gem of a brochure at an antique show, enticed by the images of its cover and back. The 46 pages inside are excerpted from the hotel guest magazine Here’s Hawaii, from the Tongg Publishing Company of Honolulu, with a copyright date of 1957. Subsequently we have seen a similar publication with a Pan Am cover, so it looks like Tongg Publishing ran custom runs of the same basic information.

Inside, there are segments for each of the main islands talking about what to see and do, where to eat and stay, and how to get around, with the most pages dedicated to Oahu. The resort destinations of Kona on the Big Island, and Wailea and Ka’anapali on Maui, were not even conceived of when this guide was published – and even on Oahu, most of the hotels and restaurants famous since the Jet Age had not yet been constructed. So the booklet is a window in time back before statehood and the Elvis films brought truly mass-tourism to the Islands, so hard to see today without getting well away from the main cities and beaches.

Read the full brochure for yourself at https://northwestairlineshistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Brochure-NWA_Airventure-Guide-to-Hawaii_1957.pdf

Aloha!

REFLECTIONS Extra – 1976 North Central Ski Tips

Click to open the full brochure.

Another fun brochure encouraging us to get out and enjoy nature has just arrived, featuring ski pro Jake Hoeschler with 25 pages of tips for hitting the slopes and trails. Hoeschler was a collegiate and national star who made a lifelong career of his passion, even forming his own company, International Sports Management. He served on North Central’s advisory board in the 1970s and was the airline’s contact person to the ski resort industry – often promoting the MSP – Denver service in print and broadcast media.

REFLECTIONS Extra – 1946 Hunting Guide

Click this image to open the full PDF of the guide.

Another brochure we just received continues our “get outdoors and away from the crowd” series – this one an eight-panel listing of game hunting seasons and limits across the Fall 1946 Northwest network.

The line art of a DC-4 above a wooden sign pounded into the clouds would be re-used in many other brochures – a small but illustrative example of NWA’s corporate attitude of letting nothing go to waste that could be re-used. The pheasant linework is intricate but likely a readily-available die – in common parlance, “clip art.”

Of course, the phrasing “NORTHWEST Oriental AIRLINES” rings strangely to modern ears! This flyer comes at a very specific point in the timeline – after the route to New York City was awarded and begun, with routes awarded from Minneapolis and Seattle to Alaska awarded but not yet begun, and with authorities to Japan and beyond working their way through government review. NWA knew it wanted to enhance its branding, and this approach must have been the momentary consensus at the exact moment the flyer went to press. By year-end 1946 the service mark “Northwest Orient Airlines” had been conclusively decided upon.

REFLECTIONS Extra – 1978 North Central Fishing Trips to Canada

Click here to open the full brochure. From the D. Scott Norris collection.

“Relax in unspoiled wilderness areas. No telephones to annoy you. Crystal clear waters are everywhere… surrounded by towering trees reminiscent of days long past. You snake a lure out over the quiet water. Start to retrieve. Then bam! And your fun begins.”

Following on to our 1951 Northwest fishing brochure, here’s a North Central gem from 1978, listing packages in Western Ontario and Manitoba. Nearly all of the options included some bush flying out of International Falls, MN / Fort Frances, ON to remote lodges or even floating houseboat accommodations.

From the 1960s into the early 1980s, fishing trips into the remote Canadian wilderness were an affordable middle-class adventure, especially for folks in the Upper Midwest who would usually vacation in Minnesota, Wisconsin, or northern Michigan in the summer.

As higher-paying union jobs (with well-defined vacation benefits) declined in the 1980s, so too did multi-week family vacations to the Northland. Rising costs of fuel, interest, and insurance also made it more expensive to fly small aircraft in Canada, and these trends combined to make fly-in sport fishing a hobby only for the wealthy by the late 1980s.

North Central and Republic had been able to fly DC-9s into Hibbing/Chisholm as well as International Falls with decent loads of passengers destined for fishing trips into the wilderness, but as that type of tourism faded, those stations could only support Republic Express Saabs and Jetstreams by the mid-80s.

REFLECTIONS Extra – 1951 Fishing Guide

Having been a collector of airline ephemera for over forty years, it’s rare nowadays to come across something that I haven’t seen at a show, in an antique shop, or on eBay – but in December I did, and was able to purchase it at a reasonable price: a May 1951 “Northwest Airlines Fishing Guide” published in cooperation with the venerable Shakespeare Fishing Tackle Company of (at the time) Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Illustrator D. Owen created 12 pages of vivid artwork to bring this pamphlet co-created by the Shakespeare Fishing Tackle Company and Northwest Airlines to life. This May 1951 document was lithographed perfectly, allowing the Mid-Century era color and linework to shine. From the collection of D. Scott Norris.

Click here to view the full pamphlet in PDF form.

Northwest was eager to grow business in the early 1950s – and lacking any domestic warm-weather tourist destinations save Hawaii, played to its strength of Northern adventure – and appeal to the growing middle and executive classes to really “get away from it all” on a quiet lake or stream.

One wonders if fishing might make a comeback in post-pandemic times as an activity in nature that rewards not being in a large group and allows for self-contemplation and appreciation of the environment.

Interior page from the NWA-Shakespeare joint fishing promotion brochure from 1951. From the D. Scott Norris collection.

The brochure copy is certainly of its time, pitching exclusively to male stereotypes – but its selling points still remain evocative and effective!

Interior page from the NWA-Shakespeare joint fishing promotion brochure from 1951. From the D. Scott Norris collection.

The artwork by D. Owen is also very much of its time – outdoors magazines and catalogs provided steady work for many commercial illustrators, as the lithography process handled this kind of art better than color photography.

Interior page from the NWA-Shakespeare joint fishing promotion brochure from 1951. From the D. Scott Norris collection.

Wouldn’t these illustrations look amazing on the walls of a Mid-Century house? I’m ready to pack my bags for a North Woods trip already…

The Shakespeare company is part of a larger ownership group now, but it had a long history from the late 1800s. A corporate biography from the 1950s can be found at this link, and a more-recent document can be found here. I haven’t been able to uncover any information on the illustrator but would be happy to learn more.

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