'Railroad iron is a magician's rod in its power to evoke the sleeping energies of land and water.' America's Railroad Age was little more than a decade old when Ralph Waldo Emerson uttered these prophetic words. Railroads exercised a remarkable hold on the imagination. The railroad was not merely transportation; it was a technology that promised to transform the world. Railroads were second only to the federal government in shaping the West, and nowhere was that shaping more visible than on the Great Plains and in large parts of the Pacific Northwest.Filled with contemporary accounts, illustrations, and photographs, "The West the Railroads Made" offers a fresh look at what the iron road created. Visionaries who imagined the railroad as a new Northwest Passage inspired Americans in the 1840s and 1850s to see the West as a fertile garden or a treasure chest of priceless minerals. Railroads could deliver the riches of that West into the hands and pockets of the modern world. These two compelling ideas - the railroad and the West - came together to create an irresistible dream.In less than half a century, railroads made the West a permanent extension of the modern, capitalist world. The railroad West sprang to life with amazing speed. Immigrants came by the thousands. Overnight a windswept stretch of Wyoming became Cheyenne. Prairies were fenced or plowed to make range land or farm land. New plants and animals shoved aside those that did not fit marketplace needs. All of this was touted as the new West, the railroad West. But all too often, the railroad West promised prosperity and security but delivered hard times and bitterness. For more than a century the American West was the railroad West. While the railroad's influence was challenged in the twentieth century by automobiles and the interstate highway system, railroads did not vanish from the landscape. Instead, they reinvented themselves. The iron road had once defined the West; now it was part of a larger landscape.Carlos A. Schwantes is St. Louis Mercantile Library Endowed Professor of Transportation Studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, specializing in the history of the twentieth-century American West. He is author of "Going Places: Transportation Redefines the Twentieth-Century West and Railroad Signatures across the Pacific Northwest". James P. Ronda holds the H. G.Barnard Chair in Western American History at the University of Tulsa, specializing in the history of exploration of the American West. He is the author of "Beyond Lewis and Clark: The Army Explores the West" and "Jefferson's West: A Journey with Lewis and Clark".
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Picture printed in The Times Literary Supplement, 19th September 2008 : "A Brochure cover promoting grain-growing in western North Dakota"
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Carlos Schwantes is St. Louis Mercantile Library Endowed Professor of Transportation Studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, specializing in the history of the twentieth-century American West. He is author of Going Places: Transportation Redefines the Twentieth-Century West and Railroad Signatures across the Pacific Northwest. James P. Ronda holds the H. G. Barnard Chair in Western American History at the University of Tulsa, specializing in the history of exploration of the American West. He is the author of Beyond Lewis and Clark: The Army Explores the West and Jefferson's West: A Journey with Lewis and Clark.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Highly recommended for locomotion enthusiasts everywhere,
By Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The West the Railroads Made (Hardcover)
The innovation of railroads in the early nineteenth century transformed America from a nation covering the eastern seaboard to the country it is today spanning from Maine to Southern California. "The West The Railroads Made" is an anthology of stories, illustrations, and photographs (some of which are color) to tell the tale of how the pioneers of this technology were essential in transforming America in the country it is today. "The West The Railroads Made" is highly recommended for locomotion enthusiasts everywhere, and for any community library collection for Railroads or American history.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
formative role of railroads in opening and settlement of the American West,
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This review is from: The West the Railroads Made (Hardcover)
More than any other single factor, railroads made the West the way it was and is in many respects today. The Federal government undeniably had a major role too. But the Louisiana Purchase, offers of free land, troops for security, and such, were government measures related mostly to setting the stage. It was the railroads which accounted for the details of Western development; details which caused settlers to lead their lives in certain ways and make decisions about which opportunities to pursue. Thus did the railroads play an incomparable role in how the West was developed. "The railroad was foreground, everything else was background," is the way the authors put it.
The co-authors steeped in Western history with academic and professional backgrounds go into all aspects of the railroad's effects. Railroad lines not only determined the location of towns, but also the layout of them. In their earliest stages, roads in Western towns were oriented toward the railroad depot. Furthermore, the railroad depot was the first experience settlers and immigrants had of a town; and as a place for the receiving and shipping of goods, a town's economy and in some cases its existence depended on the depot. Railroads adapted as they changed the West by their presence. The original few early lines tied all parts of the West together internally and with the cities and states of the eastern parts. The value of land, the farms growing corn and wheat in such quantities that it affected the diet of all Americans, mountains of ore for Midwestern and Northern factories, and transport of large numbers of persons for rapid growth in many inviting areas were all major economic and sociological developments directly related to the railroads. As the West became more developed and their original roles faded, the railroads adapted by promoting tourism based on the natural wonders of the West and travel to major cities and other vacation areas. The work is based on innumerable facts colorfully related; which facts were taken from the authors' scholarly knowledge and interest in Western history. Another part of the book's popular style are the hundreds of illustrations enhancing the text. A map of one early Western town, for instance, demonstrates the town's streets leading in straight lines from the railroad depot so people and goods can move easily to and from this hub. Color travel posters complement text on the different railroad lines' playing up the West as a tourist destination. Railroad documents, prints, and photographs are other sorts of illustrated materials. The assorted visual matter is so bountiful it spills over into the back matter of notes, bibliography, and index.
2.0 out of 5 stars
The West the Railroads Made,
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This review is from: The West the Railroads Made (Hardcover)
Ok book... rattles on & jumps around, never really completing a story. Never finished it. And I'm a RR buff, having walked a vast sections of the CPRR in NV. [...] we have some photos there
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