Washington state tourism is big business today. Boosters promote the pristine mountain ranges, national forests, and the many charms of Seattle and other metropolitan areas.

In 1897, boosters used stuffed goat heads.

Washington, tucked in the far Northwest corner of the country, was considered a remote outpost in 1897. But the railroads, who needed people to move west, did not let geography stop progress. The Northern Pacific Railroad promoted Washington as "the Empire State of the Future," and launched a massive public relations campaign to prove it.

The most curious was a traveling exhibit car that displayed the products of the state’s forest and fields. Operated by the Northern Pacific, the car was a mobile cabinet of curiosities. It included, among the many agricultural and mineral wonders of the West, stuffed buffalo and mountain goat heads.

Museum-like rail cars had a limited geographic range, however, and so railroads used the power of the pen. They published advertising brochures in various languages to attract settlers from western and northern Europe. These publications, of which millions of copies were printed, were colorful and vividly written. Photographs and paintings showcased scenic wonders, products of farm and factory, and the overall prosperity of the northern West.

Other brochures invited tourists to visit the natural wonders of the region. Better yet, they were encouraged to permanently move to the West’s new Gardens of Eden and grow rich and prosperous.

"The poor man, desirous of making a home for himself and family, and willing to work, can find no country which offers greater inducements than Washington Territory," claimed one brochure.1

The railroads had good reason to devote so much effort to advertising the West. To encourage their construction, railroads were given enormous land grants by Congress. One of the largest land grants, consisting of 470 million acres, went to the Northern Pacific. In reality, the lawmakers awarded only the alternate sections of land, and retained the rest for Uncle Sam. This created immense checkerboard swaths of railroad land across the West that’s visible by air even today.

Initially, railroads used their land holdings to raise capital to build their lines. Once they had trains running on schedule they needed to generate business. It was their goal to populate the land along the tracks with farmers, ranchers, and townspeople of various trades and skills. Tourists were important also.

To get the word out, railroads hired creative wordsmiths, artists, and photographers to sell the West to the world, especially during the growth years from the 1880s through the 1930s. A skilled rail promoter could artfully transform any sagebrush wilderness into a Garden of Eden. It didn’t seem to matter that the gardens withered when the rains stopped. Nor that gullible settlers cursed the railroads for having lured them out West under false pretenses.

But selling the West wasn’t always easy. Publicists had to overcome several decades of negative perceptions. Zebulon Pike and Stephen Long, who explored the West after Lewis and Clark, weren’t impressed with the Great Plains. They labeled them the "Great American Desert."

To get people to consider moving or visiting the West, publicists had to battle negative images. Some people thought Wyoming was a "howling wilderness," where settlers faced a "bewildering solitude." The city of Cheyenne was considered "the one wickedest spot on Earth."

Senator Daniel Webster is quoted as having called the West "that region of savages and wild beasts, of deserts, of shifting sands and whirling winds, of dust, of cactus and prairie dogs."