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. This title offers a look at what the iron road created.
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. Carlos A. Schwantes is St. Louis Mercantile Library Endowed Professor of Transportation Studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. James P. Ronda holds the H. G. Barnard Chair in Western American History at the University of Tulsa.
