Artists of the Great Northern Railway

Painting by Adolph Heinze

As the railroads expanded across America and Canada and began regularly hauling freight, the operators of the railroads also sought ways to encourage and increase their passenger services westward. The establishment of new national parks in the west provided opportunities to extend passenger services to the parks and create a new tourism industry based on rail travel. Forward-looking railroad men realized that they would also have to build accommodations for these passengers once they arrived in the parks, and that, too, became a lucrative business operation for them. However, they needed some way to attract potential customers - they turned to artists to promote the beauty and adventure of the parks for their marketing campaigns.

A few highly trained and accomplished artists were hired to create the paintings that conveyed the great adventure of travel to the new territories and national parks. They documented and of…