An appealing, double-sided broadside advertising a trip aboard the Southern Pacific Railway to the Hotel Del Monte, “The Queen of American Watering Places.”

The advertisement is aimed at the “thousands of residents of the Eastern states and elsewhere…whose sections of country are visited by sharp and desolating winds, and are swathed many months with cold and uninviting snows, and who annually pack up and rush off wildly to the most accessible Southern resorts, heedless of accommodations and the rates thereof.”

It goes on to say that those who foolishly choose to head south on vacation, simply must be unaware of the astounding reasonableness of the rates at the Del Monte. “Indeed,” the text declares, “more wonder, from those who have traveled extensively, is elicited on account of the reasonableness of the hotel charges at Del Monte, than from all other things.” And that the rates at the Del Monte “are precisely, or about precisely, half what are charged in South Carolina and Florida for always poorer, and generally indifferent, accommodations.” (It is unclear how these exact statistics have been determined.)

The back of the piece shows different routes along Southern Pacific lines, and lists agents in the US and abroad.

The Hotel Del Monte was built in 1880 by Charles Crocker, one of California’s “big four” railroad barons. Established through the Pacific Improvement Company, the property division of the Southern Pacific Railroad, the hotel was an immediate success. It is considered the first true resort complex in the United States, and a major factor in Monterey’s modern-day tourism industry. At its height, the property encompasses 20,000 acres spread across the Monterey Peninsula, including a botanical garden, golf course, and art gallery. The hotel burned down in 1887 and was quickly rebuilt. It stayed open until the second World War, when it was leased to the navy. Today, the property is now part of the Naval Postgraduate School.