141 Years ago

[jbsmith]

Almost missed it!
141 years ago today, the 10th of May 1869, in the state of Utah, more below

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promontory_Summit

[J3a-614]

There is an interesting and touching human story connected with this.

Most people remember Leland Stanford, Collis P. Huntington, Mark Hopkins, and Charlie Crocker of the Central Pacific--the famous and sometimes infamous "Big Four."  There was also a fifth man, surveyor and civil engineer Theodore Judah, who really did lay out the route, worked to promote the road for years, and finally would get backing from the Big Four.  I won't say he was entirely a saint (what businessman with great ambition is?), but he did get upset with what he thought were some things that were not done right in his moral eye.  He was marginalized and eventually cast out of the Central Pacific.  On his way back east to raise money to attempt to regain control over the CP, he was bitten by a mosquito carrying yellow fever while crossing Panama, and died at the age of 37.

He left a widow, Anne Pierce Judah, who carried on his engineering work and ran his firm for other railroads; a female civil engineer and business person, a rarity at the time.  And I wonder what went through her mind in the big clebrations of May 10, 1869--which was also the date of her wedding aniversary to Judah in 1847.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Four_(Central_Pacific_Railroad)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leland_Stanford

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collis_P._Huntington

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Hopkins_(railroad)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Crocker

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Judah

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._D._Judah

[uncbob]

[Doneldon]

The whole story of the first transcon RR is told in Stephen Ambrose' Nothing Like It in the World.  Definitely worth a read if you want the whole story, much of which went on everywhere but the construction site.  There were huge personalities (read "egos"), financial troubles and bitter competition between the Central Pacific, building east from Sacramento, and the Union Pacific, building west from Omaha.

          --D

[mabloodhound]

I also read Ambrose's book but there are numerous errors in history and fact.
I would caution anyone wanting the true story to read David Haward Bain's monumental Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad (Viking, 1999, 797 pages)
You will get the whole truth and not the fiction that Ambrose wrote.   See more at Amazon.com's book review.

[uncbob]

[Johnson Bar Jeff]

I also read Ambrose's book but there are numerous errors in history and fact.
I would caution anyone wanting the true story to read David Haward Bain's monumental Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad (Viking, 1999, 797 pages)
You will get the whole truth and not the fiction that Ambrose wrote.   See more at Amazon.com's book review.

I also heartily recommend Bain's book. It seems to me that often railroad histories either cover the tangible side of the story--construction and engineering and equipment and so forth--or the business side of the story, depending on the interest of the author. Bain covers both.

[Doneldon]

mabloodhound-

I'm not so sure that Ambrose got the facts wrong so much as he used selective compression and forced perspective, like we all do in our modeling, to tell his story.  It's how he makes his historical novels a bit more interesting and entertaining, again like we do with our models.  Whatever source one reads, though, it's a great yarn, full of chicanery, heroic effort, massive egos and brinksmanship.

          --D

[poliss]

In a review of Ambrose's 'Nothing Like it in The World' on UtahRails.net,  the authors say "It is a far cry from the truth. In the opinion of many railroad historians this history can be relegated to the list of some of the worst examples of the true history of the Pacific Railroad yet published. He should be ashamed of himself."
http://utahrails.net/articles/ambrose.php