Editing Northern Pacific Railway (section)

===The Route of "the Great Big Baked Potato"===
[[File:Northern Pacific Railway Lillian Russell 1915.JPG|thumb|Actress [[Lillian Russell]] and other Hollywood stars were hired to promote the railroad's potatoes.]]
[[File:Northern Pacific Big Baked Potato comic postcard.JPG|thumb|A comic postcard circa 1910 to 1920 promoting "The Great Big Baked Potato".|left]]

Hazen Titus was appointed as the line's dining car superintendent in 1908. He learned that [[Yakima River|Yakima Valley]] farmers were unable to sell their potato crops because the potatoes they were growing were simply too large; they fed them to the hogs. Titus learned that a single potato could weigh from two to five pounds, but that smaller potatoes were preferred by the end buyers of the vegetable because many people considered large potatoes inedible due to their thick, rough skin.<ref name=potato>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7INcKYtplxsC&q=great+big+baked+potato+northern+pacific&pg=PA74|title=Dining Car To The Pacific: The "Famously Good" Food of the Northern Pacific Railway|editor-last=Mckenzie|editor-first=William A.|publisher=University of Minnesota Press| year=2004| page=176| isbn=978-0816645626| access-date=September 15, 2012| via=Google Books}}</ref>

Titus and his staff discovered the "inedible" potatoes were delicious after baking in a slow oven. He contracted to purchase as many potatoes as the farmers could produce that were more than two pounds in weight. Soon after the first delivery of "[[Russet Burbank potato|Netted Gem Bakers]]", they were offered to diners on the North Coast Limited beginning in early 1909. Word of the line's specialty offering traveled quickly, and before long it was using "the Great Big Baked Potato" as a slogan to promote the railroad's passenger service. Hollywood stars were hired to promote it.<ref>{{cite book| first=William| last=Hathaway| title=Idaho Falls Post Register| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AqG5SU2Ja0kC&pg=PA53| year=2009| publisher=Arcadia Publishing| page=53| via=Google Books| isbn=9780738559681}}</ref> When an addition was built for the Northern Pacific's Seattle commissary in 1914, a ''[[Railway Age]]'' reporter wrote, "A large trade mark, in the shape of a baked potato, 40 ft. long and 18 ft. in diameter, surmounts the roof. The potato is electric lighted and its eyes, through the electric mechanism, are made to wink constantly. A cube of butter thrust into its split top glows intermittently." Premiums such as postcards, letter openers, and spoons were also produced to promote "The Route of the Great Big Baked Potato"; the slogan served the Northern Pacific for about 50 years.<ref name=potato/>