Account of the railroad conquest of the United States.

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.

Includes schedule of the California Zephyr, and brief comments about points of interest along the route from Chicago to San Francisco.

The story of the men who build the transcontinental railroad in the 1860's.

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.

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.