Vintage San Diego Souvenir Mini Photo Postcard Booklet by Western Publishing & Novelty Co

A Little Vacation, Bound Together

There was a time when bringing home a vacation meant choosing something small enough to fit beside the essentials. A souvenir booklet could hold the places you had visited, the sights you hoped to remember, and a little of the feeling of being somewhere else.

This San Diego keepsake offers that experience in miniature. Its cover introduces the city with an illustrated mission, a bright blue sky, and sweeping red lettering. The original 25-cent price remains in the corner, a modest detail that makes the object feel wonderfully connected to its everyday beginnings.

Inside, the booklet moves between waterfront scenes, downtown streets, hotel architecture, and familiar landmarks. The photographed pages include the Coronado ferry, California Tower in Balboa Park, the U.S. Grant Hotel, Point Loma lighthouse, and Broadway. Each view is paired with a printed description, giving the reader something to discover beyond the picture.

One especially interesting page features the El Cortez Hotel and its exterior glass elevator. Installed in 1956, the elevator became a memorable attraction in its own right, carrying visitors up the outside of the building. Its appearance here provides a useful clue to the booklet’s approximate period, although the exact publication year remains unconfirmed.

The printed credits name Western Publishing & Novelty Co. of Los Angeles and identify the images as CurteichColor reproductions. Curt Teich’s postcard production records, now held by the Newberry Library, preserve the photographs, layouts, and coloring instructions behind this broader tradition of travel imagery. These little souvenirs were carefully constructed invitations to see a place.

For a collector today, the appeal lies in the combination: pictures, typography, descriptive text, and an unused mailing panel gathered into one compact object. For a home, it offers a quieter kind of decoration, something to open on a small stand or discover among books.

It does not need a large display to make an impression. Sometimes a few inches of paper are enough to bring a whole destination into the room.

Imagine it in your home

• Open to a favorite view on a small stand beside travel books.
• Add to a shallow display case with postcards and vacation keepsakes.
• Pair with a California map or souvenir dish for a personal travel vignette.