The Boxcar Full of Washington: Selling the Evergreen State to the East
A Great Northern exhibit car of glass-jarred fruit has toured 10,000 miles through the East, drawing 100,000 visitors and closing schools so pupils could see what Washington grows — all part of Louis W. Hill's campaign to lure settlers west.
The Great Northern car containing an exhibit of the products of the state of Washington, which has been on a tour of the east, has returned to Seattle, after a trip covering 10,000 miles.
This exhibit car, which represents President Louis W. Hill's idea in direct advertising, contains an array of glass jars filled with specimens of fruit. Since the car was fitted out following the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific exposition it has traveled over the principal parts of the United States, and not a glass has been shivered nor a setting misplaced.
When the exhibit was gathered by General Immigration Agent E. C. Leedy it was the intention of displaying only products of the state contiguous to the Great Northern line, but its promoters finally included the best farm output of every county in the state.
Mr. Leedy, who accompanied the exhibit to Seattle, said that fully 100,000 persons have visited the car since it began its travels from this city last October. It was shown at the dry farming congress in Billings, Mont., in October. Then it was taken to St. Paul and Minneapolis, where it began its long series of one and two day stands all through Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Indiana, Pennsylvania, New York and Massachusetts. It crossed the state of New York four times, and from Worcester, Mass., started back west.
Schools have closed in the eastern cities to give the pupils first hand information of the products of Washington, and wherever it has shown for two days the night intervening has been filled in with a stereopticon lecture on the wonders, scenic and agricultural, of the Evergreen state.
On the principle that a constant dropping of literature will wear away the tie that binds the easterner to the homes of his ancestors, the bureau, under Mr. Leedy, puts all the visitors to the car on the regular mailing list and begins to shower pamphlets and magazines upon them.
“Schools have closed in the eastern cities to give the pupils first hand information of the products of Washington, and wherever it has shown for two days the night intervening has been filled in with a stereopticon lecture on the wonders, scenic and agricultural, of the Evergreen state.”
The Great Northern's traveling fruit car was 1910's version of a state tourism-and-recruitment campaign — a railroad selling Washington to easterners as a place to start over. The same pitch, now aimed at tech workers and remote employees, still fills the state's marketing budgets.
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