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The Race to Build America's Greatest Transcontinental Railroad
Random House
October 2010
On Sale: September 28, 2010
432 pages
ISBN: 1400065615
EAN: 9781400065615
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
From acclaimed historian Walter R. Borneman comes a dazzling
account of the battle to build America’s transcontinental
rail lines. Rival Rails is an action-packed epic of how an
empire was born—and the remarkable men who made it happen.
After the completion of the first transcontinental railroad
in 1869, the rest of the country was up for grabs, and the
race was on. The prize: a better, shorter, less snowy route
through the corridors of the American Southwest, linking Los
Angeles to Chicago. In Rival Rails, Borneman lays out in
compelling detail the sectional rivalries, contested routes,
political posturing, and ambitious business dealings that
unfolded as an increasing number of lines pushed their way
across the country. Borneman brings to life the legendary business geniuses and
so-called robber barons who made millions and fought the
elements—and one another—to move America, including William
Jackson Palmer, whose leadership of the Denver and Rio
Grande Western Railroad relied on innovative narrow gauge
trains that could climb steeper grades and take tighter
curves; Collis P. Huntington of the Central Pacific and
Southern Pacific lines, a magnate insatiably obsessed with
trains—and who was not above bribing congressmen to satisfy
his passion; Edward Payson Ripley, visionary president of
the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, whose fiscal conservatism
and smarts brought the industry back from the brink; and Jay
Gould, ultrasecretive, strong-armer and one-man powerhouse. In addition, Borneman captures the herculean efforts
required to construct these roads—the laborers who did the
back-breaking work, boring tunnels through mountains and
throwing bridges across unruly rivers, the brakemen who ran
atop moving cars, the tracklayers crushed and killed by
runaway trains. From backroom deals in Washington, D.C., to
armed robberies of trains in the wild deserts, from
glorified cattle cars to streamliners and Super Chiefs, all
the great incidents and innovations of a mighty American era
are re-created with unprecedented power in Rival Rails.
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