This is a very detailed description of the early days of the railroads in the western United States. The subtitle is “America’s Race to Bring the Railroads West”. Borneman discusses the numerous railroad companies, and the men who ran them. There were fortunes to be made, if you could get your line through to the Read More
Tag: Railroads
Hell on Wheels, by Dick Kreck
Apparently, the title is the phrase people used to describe the towns that popped up along the route of construction of the Union Pacific Railroad in the late 1860’s. This was due to the high proportion of individuals in these towns whose main goal was to separate railroad construction workers from their pay. Some of Read More
A Short History of the Railroad, by Christian Wolmar
I had thought that this book would cover the history of the American railroad system, and it does. However, it also covers the history of railroad systems around the world. So, the level of information is in some cases very broad, but not terribly deep. Having said that, I did learn a couple of things Read More
The Edge of Anarchy, by Jack Kelly
It’s amazing to me all of the things that were so impactful to people, and our county, when they happened, that we have forgotten about today. This is a book about one of those things – the railroad strike in 1894. Also, as I was reading it, I kept wondering if this was something I Read More
Sod Busting by David B Danbom
The subtitle of this slim book is “How Families Made Farms on the Nineteenth-Century Plains”, and is part of a series of books called “How Things Worked”. The focus of this book is mainly Kansas, Nebraska, and North and South Dakota, between about 1862 and 1900. And the author does not describe just how farms Read More