The West the Railroads Made

'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 tr [...]
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'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".