Moonlight in Duneland

About this book

Known as the "Little Train That Could," the Chicago South Shore and South Bend Railroad has served as a major commercial and recreational transportation link for ninety years. For its first two decades, it survived good times and bad until its landmark purchase by Samuel Insull's Midland Utilities in 1925. Insull launched an aggressive marketing campaign producing booklets, movies, and in particular a set of colorful, artistic posters, which attracted many from Illinois to the sand dunes and steel mills of Northwest Indiana. Moonlight in Duneland tells the story of that poster campaign through the reproduction of the thirty-eight known surviving posters. Additional advertising items from the 1920s and 1970s are sprinkled throughout the book, along with original art by Dale Fleming, Mitchell A. Markovitz, Alice Phillips, and John Rush. In addition, four essays describe the background of Insull's marketing genius and the artists who created the posters. While Moonlight in Duneland pays tribute to eras gone by, it also traces a new period of growth in the Calumet Region - "A Region in Renaissance." Sponsored by the Northwest Indiana Forum, new poster art has been commissioned to celebrate the many wonders of the area, and several of these images are magnificently reproduced as a complement to the posters from the twenties.