Customer Reviews

Tracks to the Sea: Galveston and Western Railroad Development, 1866-1900 (Centennial Series of the Association of Former Students, Texas A&M University)

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For about 15 years, I extensively worked with the Huntington Papers microfilm from Syracuse University. When Collis Potter Huntington of the Southern Pacific/Central Pacific died in 1900, his heirs scooped up the papers in his office, and donated them a generation later to the university. That's hundreds of reels of microfilm of day to day correspondence, most of it either hand-written or produced on a horrible typewriter - almost none of it easily read!

So, I'm impressed when I see just how much the author "gets" the complex relationship between Huntington and Jay Gould in the power struggle that Galveston represented. I saw little that he missed from Huntington papers - and that's saying a LOT.

The book is excellent, well written, and thoroughly researched. If you have an interest in the Southern Pacific (my passion), the Texas & Pacific/Missouri Pacific, Jay Gould, Huntington, or simply the gulf coast or Texas coast, this is a must have book. It's very inexpensive, and worth every dime. This is a truly beautiful little book.