Book Description
Account of the railroad conquest of the United States.
Author : Robert E. Riegel
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
Page : 380 pages
File Size : 32,94 MB
Release : 1926
Category : History
ISBN :
Account of the railroad conquest of the United States.
Author : Robert E. Riegel
Publisher :
Page : 376 pages
File Size : 10,49 MB
Release : 1926
Category : History
ISBN :
On December 23, 1852, the first train on the first railroad west of the Mississippi River steamed proudly from St. Louis to Cheltenham—the immense distance of five miles. In that moment of exaltation, writes Robert Edgar Riegel, "flags waved, bands played, and orators prophesied the flowering of the West under the beneficent influence of the steam locomotive. For once the orators were right. An epoch was marked. Twenty-five years earlier the musical whistle of the locomotive was as yet unheard in the United States. Twenty-five years later steel tracks spanned the continent from New York to San Francisco." In this account of the railroad conquest of the United States, the author is primarily concerned with the western phase of the story. He follows the Iron Horse west through Indian trouble, labor difficulties, civil war, and farmer disillusionment to the completion of the western railroad net. All aspects of the subject—financial, industrial, engineering, as well as the development of railroad regulation—are covered in this classic work.
Author : Carlos A. Schwantes
Publisher :
Page : 262 pages
File Size : 27,21 MB
Release : 2008
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN :
Includes schedule of the California Zephyr, and brief comments about points of interest along the route from Chicago to San Francisco.
Author : Stephen E. Ambrose
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 468 pages
File Size : 25,54 MB
Release : 2001-11-06
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780743203173
The story of the men who build the transcontinental railroad in the 1860's.
Author : John Sedgwick
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 27,38 MB
Release : 2021-06-01
Category : History
ISBN : 1982104309
“Riveting...A great read, full of colorful characters and outrageous confrontations back when the west was still wild.” —George R.R. Martin A propulsive and panoramic history of one of the most dramatic stories never told—the greatest railroad war of all time, fought by the daring leaders of the Santa Fe and the Rio Grande to seize, control, and create the American West. It is difficult to imagine now, but for all its gorgeous scenery, the American West might have been barren tundra as far as most Americans knew well into the 19th century. While the West was advertised as a paradise on earth to citizens in the East and Midwest, many believed the journey too hazardous to be worthwhile—until 1869, when the first transcontinental railroad changed the face of transportation. Railroad companies soon became the rulers of western expansion, choosing routes, creating brand-new railroad towns, and building up remote settlements like Santa Fe, Albuquerque, San Diego, and El Paso into proper cities. But thinning federal grants left the routes incomplete, an opportunity that two brash new railroad men, armed with private investments and determination to build an empire across the Southwest clear to the Pacific, soon seized, leading to the greatest railroad war in American history. In From the River to the Sea, bestselling author John Sedgwick recounts, in vivid and thrilling detail, the decade-long fight between General William J. Palmer, the Civil War hero leading the “little family” of his Rio Grande, and William Barstow Strong, the hard-nosed manager of the corporate-minded Santa Fe. What begins as an accidental rivalry when the two lines cross in Colorado soon evolves into an all-out battle as each man tries to outdo the other—claiming exclusive routes through mountains, narrow passes, and the richest silver mines in the world; enlisting private armies to protect their land and lawyers to find loopholes; dispatching spies to gain information; and even using the power of the press and incurring the wrath of the God-like Robber Baron Jay Gould—to emerge victorious. By the end of the century, one man will fade into anonymity and disgrace. The other will achieve unparalleled success—and in the process, transform a sleepy backwater of thirty thousand called “Los Angeles” into a booming metropolis that will forever change the United States. Filled with colorful characters and high drama, told at the speed of a locomotive, From the River to the Sea is an unforgettable piece of American history “that seems to demand a big-screen treatment” (The New Yorker).
Author : Robert Edgar Riegel
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 24,34 MB
Release : 1965
Category : Pacific railroads
ISBN :
Author : Donald B. Robertson
Publisher : Caxton Press
Page : 380 pages
File Size : 50,62 MB
Release : 1986
Category : Mountain railroads
ISBN : 9780870043857
Distributed by the University of Nebraska Press for Caxton Press This book includes 368 pages of maps, photographs and technical data on the history of railroading in California. There are detailed reports on dates of operation, mergers, miles of track, maximum grade, gauge and rail weight. It also includes the histories of thousands of locomotives.
Author : Dee Brown
Publisher : Macmillan
Page : 324 pages
File Size : 24,16 MB
Release : 2001-09
Category : History
ISBN : 9780805068924
From the author of the best-selling Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown's classic account of the building of the transcontinental railroad. In February 1854 the first railroad from the East reached the Mississippi; by the end of the nineteenth century five major transcontinental railroads linked the East Coast with the Pacific Ocean and thousands of miles of tracks criss-crossed in the West, a vast and virginal land just a few years before. The story of this extraordinary undertaking is one of breathtaking technological ingenuity, otherwordly idealism, and all-too-wordly greed. The heroes and villains were Irish and Chineselaborers, intrepid engineers, avaricious bankers, stock manipulators, and corrupt politicians. Before it was over more than 155 million acres (one tenth of the country) were given away to the railroad magnates, Indian tribes were decimated, the buffalo were driven from the Great Plains, millions of immigrants were lured from Europe, and a colossal continental nation was built. Woven into this dramatic narrative are the origins of present-day governmental corruption, the first ties between powerful corporations and politicians who "enjoyed the frequent showers of money that fell upon them from railroad stock manipulators, and gave away America." How the people of that time responded to a sense of disillusionment remarkably similar to our own adds a contemporary dimension to this story.
Author : Tom Murray
Publisher :
Page : 126 pages
File Size : 41,90 MB
Release :
Category : Transportation
ISBN : 9781616731540
By the time it was merged into the Union Pacific in 1995, the Chicago & North Western was one of the nations oldest surviving railroads, a testament to the Midwestern stoicism with which it had gone about its business since 1859. This illustrated history chronicles how C&NW emerged from a collection of regional carriers to become a strategic link between eastern railroads and the West. Author Tom Murray traces the railroads expansion as it extended secondary lines throughout the Midwest. He also explores C&NWs joint ownership of UP passenger trains and describes how the railroad answered challenges from regional rivals with the "400" series of passenger trains. As fascinating as the story are the hundreds of accompanying illustrations--historical photographs, archival images, route maps, and period print ads. The result is an entertaining and informative history of an iconic Midwestern railroad--a narrative that spans the decades from the 1850s to the 1990s and takes in steam and diesel motive power, freight and passenger operations, and all the key characters, events, and deals that figured in the Chicago & North Westerns rise and eventual demise.
Author : Gordon H. Chang
Publisher : Houghton Mifflin
Page : 325 pages
File Size : 25,31 MB
Release : 2019
Category : China
ISBN : 1328618579
A groundbreaking, breathtaking history of the Chinese workers who built the Transcontinental Railroad, helping to forge modern America only to disappear into the shadows of history until now.