Transcontinental Railroad Research Articles

Asian Pioneers in the Eastern United States: Chinese Cutlery Workers in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, in the 1870s

Asian Pioneers in the Eastern United States: Chinese Cutlery Workers in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, in the 1870s Edward J. M. Rhoads* (bio) Figures Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. American Manufacturer (Pittsburgh), 23 November 1876, p. 7; courtesy of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. Ah Chuck. Courtesy of the Beaver Falls Historical Society Museum; used with permission. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 3. Lee Ten Poy. Courtesy of the Beaver Falls Historical Society Museum; used with permission. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 4. Chew On. Courtesy of the Beaver Falls Historical Society Museum; used with permission. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 5. Unidentified woman, probably Chew On’s wife. Courtesy of the Resource and Research Center for Beaver County and Local History; used with permission. By 1869 Chinese had been living and working in the United States in large numbers for twenty years, during which time their population had risen to nearly 60,000. Until then, they were almost all confined to the Pacific coast and the Rocky Mountains. With the completion of the transcontinental railroad in May of that year, however, they were able for the first time to venture east relatively easily, where coincidentally their labor was in sudden demand. For in both the rapidly industrializing North and the post-Civil War South, factory workers and newly emancipated slaves were exhibiting far too much independence to suit their respective bosses. The Chinese, it was thought, might provide a feasible solution to their problems. Thus, almost as soon as the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific were connected, sizable groups of Chinese began showing up in different parts of the eastern United States, to join the relative handful in Atlantic seaports who had come decades earlier with the China trade. In January 1870, 250 Chinese from California arrived in Robertson county, Texas, to help build the Houston and Texas Central Railroad. Five months later, 75 Chinese, also from California, detrained at North Adams, Massachusetts, to commence work in Calvin T. Sampson’s shoe factory. Others soon followed. In the south, 900 Chinese went to work on the Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad, and another 150 on the Millaudon sugar plantation near New Orleans, while in the [End Page 119] North, 300 Chinese came to the Passaic Steam Laundry in Belleville, New Jersey, and an equal number to the Beaver Falls Cutlery Company in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. 1 Very little is known about these pioneering Asians east of the Rockies, as scholarly attention has focused on their far more numerous fellow countrymen in the West. Furthermore, the handful of accounts that have been written about the Chinese in the East have dwelt not so much on the Chinese themselves as on the controversies, both pro and con, that their coming invariably engendered among the local population. The Chinese thus tend to come off in these studies not as the subjects but as the passive objects of history, not as acting but as acted upon. Nevertheless, these controversies serve a useful purpose, for they elicited practically all the information that is now available on these early Chinese immigrants, who left few records of their own. This article attempts to overcome the inherent biases of the sources (mostly newspaper reports) and reconstruct the life and work of one of these first Asian American groups in the eastern United States, the Chinese at the Beaver Falls Cutlery Company in the 1870s. It will also compare their experiences with those of other Chinese elsewhere in the East at the time. The Coming of the Chinese Beaver Falls is a small industrial town in southwestern Pennsylvania, twenty-eight miles northwest of Pittsburgh. It is situated on the Beaver River, three miles above its confluence with the Ohio, and served by a major east-west rail line, then the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railroad. Aside from its superior location, it is also well endowed with natural resources, including water, coal, and gas. As a result, it quickly developed in the early 1870s into a regional manufacturing center, known particularly for its production of hardware for...

Calloway, Ed., Our Hearts Fell On The Ground - Plains Indian Views On How The West Was Lost

Our Hearts Fell to the Ground follows the fate of Plains Indian people as they recoiled from, resisted, and accommodated the dramatic and devastating effects of military campaigns, forced removals, and cultural terrorism during the nineteenth century. Both a companion volume to Calloway's earlier The World Turned Upside Down: Indian Voices from Early America (1994) and a collection of native voices able to stand on its own, this latest addition to the Bedford Series on History and Culture is clearly aimed at a community college and four-year undergraduate audience and less obviously directed at people interested in American Indian issues. Colin Calloway, professor of history and Native American studies at Dartmouth College and author most recently of New Worlds for All (1998), contributes a rich collection of native voices that tell a riveting and sorrowful story about relations between indigenous people and American settlers, government officials, reformers, and missionaries. Two elements contribute to the successful presentation of Indian insights and voices in Our Hearts Fell to the Ground. First, there are Calloway's wonderfully crafted thirty-page introduction and fifty-plus pages of contextual material. Considered together, these eighty pages suggest that army bullets, transcontinental railroads, and gold rushes were experienced by native people as suppressions of local autonomy, as thefts of ancestral homelands, and as deaths of friends and family members. Within the setting developed by Calloway-the American conquest of the Plains-readers can probably acknowledge the relevance of hearing and listening to native voices.

A Conservative Voice for Black Catholics: The Case of James Martin Gillis, C.S.P.

In the United States religious and political conservatives traditionally have not supported the rights of minorities. During the nineteenth century nativism, expressed in political, social, and religious contexts, flourished and was championed most actively bv those of a conservative and isolationist mindset who rebelled against any possible contamination of the American ideals of democracy and social assimilation. Minorities were welcome when they filled a vacancy in a sweat shop, could drive spikes into railroad ties, or occupied a parcel of land to advance the western drive ofmanifest destiny. However, when these groups gained strength in numbers, formed separatist communities, or in any way threatened the beliefs or livelihood of native citizens, they were opposed and declared unwanted on all fronts. The Know-Nothing party between 1850 and 1854 gained a great following in its campaign against immigrants, especially the rapidly growing Catholic community.1 Chinese laborers, who helped construct the transcontinental railroad, were, after the California depression of 1873, considered a threat to local workers and banned from immigrating after 1882. Similar obstacles were experienced by other minority peoples culminating in the establishment of a quota system through the immigration restriction acts of 1921 and 1924. Historically the isolation and injustice perpetrated against black Americans has been the harshest experienced by any minority group.2 The 1863 Emancipation Proclamation led to the adoption of the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution, which eliminated slavery but did little to improve social conditions and nothing to change attitudes toward blacks. Social neglect of blacks in the nineteenth century was institutionalized by nativists during the Progressive Era into a rigid system of segregation (Jim Crow) which was enforced throughout the South, continuing to the onset of the Civil Rights Movement in 1955. James Martin Gillis, a Paulist priest and Irish-American, championed a staunchly conservative religious and political agenda during a colorful career as a mission preacher, magazine editor, and essay,ist. Gillis was highly critical of moral laxism, repudiated war while promoting isolationism, and rejected the growth of government control over people as a direct violation of Abraham Lincoln's famous dictum-government of, by, and for the people. The consummate conservative as described by Clinton Rossiter in 1955,3 Gillis was, nonetheless, as described in this essay, a social progressive in his advocacy of the rights of all minorities, most especially black Catholics, through essays, radio talks, and, most prominently, his leadership in the Northeastern Clergy Conference for Negro Welfare. James Martin Gillis Conservative Catholic Born in 1876 to first-generation Americans of Irish heritage and reared in the Yankee tradition of Boston, James Gillis developed a rigorist mentality which demanded much of himself and the world. Through the influences of his father and the famous Paulist evangelist, Walter Elliott, whom he first met when he was a student at St. John's Seminary in Brighton, Gillis came to perceive the world as one where the right of the individual to do good in compliance with God's law was paramount and needed to be safeguarded at all cost. During the years of his religious formation (1895-1901), which took him from St. Charles minor seminary in Ellicott, Maryland, to St. John's, and ultimately to St. Thomas College, the Paulist house of studies in Washington, D.C., Gillis gradually came to perceive the role of priesthood as a state of perfection5 which he must attain. Frustrated in his initial priestly ministry on the Chicago (1904-1907) and New York (1910-1922) mission bands and disappointed through years of retreats, where he chastised himself for his inability to achieve spiritual perfection, Gillis in his years as editor of The Catholic World (1922-1948) berated the world for its sins and imperfections. …

The beginnings of neurosurgery in California during the pre-Cushing era: 1850-1900.

The end of the present millennium marks the centennial of Harvey Cushing's European study year, after the completion of his surgical residency under William Stewart Halsted at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and just before beginning his surgical practice in Baltimore, Maryland. The year 2000 marks the sesquicentennial of California's admission to the Union as the 31st state. This report documents a number of the events and achievements that occurred during this "pre-Cushing era" (1850-1900) that contributed to the ultimate development of neurological surgery in California. The historical milestones of the California gold rush, the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad across the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and the careers of early California physicians and educators, including those of Hugh Toland and Levi Cooper Lane, were instrumental in building a foundation for the modern discipline of neurosurgery in the Golden State. This foundation would serve as a cornerstone for surgeons trained by Harvey Cushing (including Howard Naffziger, Carl Rand, and Edward Towne) who would arrive in California early in the 20th century and would define the specialty of neurosurgery. The legacy left by these physicians enhances the celebration of the closure of the millennium.

The greatest nation of the Earth: Republican economic policies during the Civil War

The cares of your country are a paramount duty - the Republicans in 1861 now is the time for making money, by honest contracts, out of the government - war bonds a centralization of power, such as Hamilton might have eulogized as magnificent - monetary legislation directing the legislation of the country to the improvement of the country - tariff and tax legislation a large crop is more than a great victory - agricultural legislation it was statesmanship to give treeless prairies value - the transcontinental railroad see that all their blessings are the result of their own labour - republicans and slavery.

A Great and Shining Road: The Epic Story of the Transcontinental Railroad. By John Hoyt Williams. New York: Times Books, 1988. Reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996. Pp. 341. $17.50.

A Great and Shining Road: The Epic Story of the Transcontinental Railroad. By John Hoyt Williams. New York: Times Books, 1988. Reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996. Pp. 341. $17.50. - Volume 57 Issue 3

A Nation of Steel: The Making of Modern America, 1865-1925.

From the age of railroads through the building of the first battleships, from the first skyscrapers to the dawning of the age of the automobile, steelmakers proved central to American industry, building, and transportation. In 'A Nation of Steel' Thomas Misa explores the complex interactions between steelmaking and the rise of the industries that have characterized modern America. Misa begins by showing how the transcontinental railroads' unprecedented demand for massive quantities of steel rails in the 1870s and 1880s led to the production of high-volume but low-quality Bessemer steel, and how that development influenced the American steel industry to this day. He describes how urbanization, including new building codes, led to changes in steel production that made possible the first American skyscrapers. And he explains why steel armor plate for battleships came to cost fifteen times more per ton than steel for rails, and how that discrepancy made Carnegie and Bethlehem the industry's leading companies. Subsequent chapters describe the increasing role played by the new science of metallurgy; the link between the invention of high-speed tool steel and the efficiency craze; and how demands of the automobile makers for a novel, high-tech consumer product gave rise to production of large volumes of high-quality steel. 'A Nation ofSteel' offers a detailed and fascinating look at an industry that has had a profound impact on American life.

American Technological Sublime

Technology has long played a central role in the formation of Americans' sense of selfhood. From the first canal systems through the moon landing, Americans have, for better or worse, derived unity from the common feeling of awe inspired by large-scale applications of prowess. American Technological Sublime continues the exploration of the social construction of technology that David Nye began in his award-winning book Electrifying America. Here Nye examines the continuing appeal of the technological (a term coined by Perry Miller) as a key to the nation's history, using as examples the natural sites, architectural forms, and achievements that ordinary people have valued intensely. American Technological Sublime is a study of the politics of perception in industrial society. Arranged chronologically, it suggests that the sublime itself has a history - that sublime experiences are emotional configurations that emerge from new social and conditions, and that each new configuration to some extent undermines and displaces the older versions. After giving a short history of the sublime as an aesthetic category, Nye describes the reemergence and democratization of the concept in the early nineteenth century as an expression of the American sense of specialness. What has filled the American public with wonder, awe, even terror? David Nye selects the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, the Erie Canal, the first transcontinental railroad, Eads Bridge, Brooklyn Bridge, the major international expositions, the Hudson-Fulton Celebration of 1909, the Empire State Building, and Boulder Dam. He then looks at the atom bomb tests and the Apollo mission as examples of the increasing ambivalence of the sublime in the postwar world. The festivities surrounding the rededication of the Statue of Liberty in 1986 become a touchstone reflecting the transformation of the American experience of the sublime over two centuries. Nye concludes with a vision of the modern-day consumer as manifested in the fantasy world of Las Vegas.

Geologic Studies in Western Kansas in the 19th Century

Geologic exploration in western Kansas in the early part of the 19th century was general, being performed as part of government surveys led by military officers such as Zebulon M. Pike, Stephen E Long, John C. Fremont, and others. These surveys began in 1806 and occurred irregularly until the late 1850's. Subsequent to the Civil War, surveys were undertaken by parties interested in a transcontinental railroad and the State of Kansas funded two surveys, the latter adding little new data regarding the western part of the state. Discoveries of fossils in the chalk, especially vertebrates, drew the attention of paleontologists such as E. D. Cope and 0. C. Marsh, who led or supported field parties in the chalk beds through much of the 1870's. Appointments of geologists to the faculty of the various colleges and to the State Board of Agriculture led to additional studies in the western part of the state. With the formation of the third State or University Geological Survey in 1889, systematic studies of the geology and natural resources of the state began. As the 19th century drew to a close, a better understanding of the geology of western Kansas began to emerge.

Urban Tourist Development in the Nineteenth Century Canadian City

The beginnings of modern urban tourism can be traced to sixteenth-century Europe's Grand Tour. It began in England and saw the major cities of Italy as its ultimate destination. Initially seen as an educational experience for the sons of English aristocrats, the motivation for undertaking the tour was eventually widened to include pleasure, art, and scenic appreciation (Towner 1985). In North America in place of the Grand Tour was the Fashionable or Northern Tour. It originated in the early nineteenth century as a means for elites to escape the oppressive summer heat of the southern states (Davison 1830). The tour began south of Charleston, South Carolina, and headed north to Richmond, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, New York, Saratoga Springs, Buffalo, and Niagara Falls before touring New England via Montreal. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Montreal and Quebec City were the principal urban centers in Lower Canada. By the end of the century, settlement had spread across the continent with the construction of the transcontinental railroad, and many new towns had been created. Despite Montreal's presence on the Fashionable tour, Canadian cities were not viewed as particularly desirable places to visit, mainly because many of the traditional attractions of European urban centers that had formed the basis for the Grand Tour, such as ancient cathedrals, museums, and historic public buildings, did not exist in newly formed cities. To be successful, a tourist destination has to provide visitors with pleasurable experiences which, by comparison with their everyday life, are out of the ordinary, which means developing unique attractions (Urry 1990). In the nineteenth century, Canadian urban tourism was in its infancy. City efforts to boost tourism consisted primarily of hosting fairs, while little consideration was given to developing attractions as a means of drawing visitors. At the national level, the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) sought to attract tourists as part of a strategy to increase ridership and reduce the debts incurred by constructing its transcontinental railroad. Its marketing efforts, however, largely ignored urban Canada and focused instead on spectacular mountain scenery. Indeed, contemporary accounts by foreign visitors to Canadian cities frequently contain descriptions of such unattractive qualities as their dirtiness and crowdedness (Dwight 1834, 184), the prevalence of fires (Thornton 1850, 61-62), and foul smells (Medley 1873, 130-31). Thus tourists were expected to avoid cities except as transportation links across the country. Rather, the principal attractions were Niagara Falls, the Saguenay, and the CPR route from Banff to Vancouver; these places were surrounded by the natural environment, which provided opportunities for the sportsman (Roberts 1892, Ingersoll 1892, Baedeker 1907). Even though Canadian cities were considered unattractive tourist destinations in the nineteenth century, the seeds of an urban tourist industry can be found in the establishment of a tourist infrastructure in the form of a national transportation system, hotels, and attractions. The purpose of this article is to trace the evolution of this urban tourism production system. Prior to undertaking this task, the processes associated with establishing a tourist industry need to be reviewed briefly. Establishing a Tourism Production System The tourist industry sells experiences, which are anticipated outcomes of gazing and the search for signs. In this manner, tourists become semioticians reading the landscape according to certain preconceived notions or signs derived from travel guides or some other means. Tourist attractions must possess characteristics that distinguish them from what persons normally encounter in everyday life. This division between the mundane and unusual is accomplished by seeing unique objects, such as Parliament in Ottawa, or particular signs such as a typical Roman Catholic church in Montreal. …

The Old West: day by day

The Old West: Day by Day is a unique historical reference that chronicles the peak years of westward expansion, the first discovery of gold in California in 1848 to the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. During these years, Americans drove westward, spurred in part by their faith in manifest destiny, the belief that the United States was destined to expand across the continent - even if that meant Indian loss of life and land. Aided by the completion of the transcontinental railroad and other technological developments, the desire for a country stretching from to shining sea was realized by the end of the 19th century. More than 15,000 chronological entries document in meticulous detail the major historical events of this period of westward expansion as well as everyday occurrences that marked life in the Old West, new gold discoveries, advances in transcontinental travel and racial skirmishes to the establishment of newspapers and journals. In a given month in the Old West, work begins on the Colorado Central and Pacific Railroad, the first school in Wyoming is dedicated in Cheyenne, Buffalo Bill Cody goes on a buffalo hunt, the Chinese Theater opens in San Francisco and a skirmish is reported in Arizona. The Old West condenses and organizes decades of history that would otherwise need to be laboriously searched in newspaper records and secondary sources. The Old West provides a broad and comprehensive overview of the more than four decades that comprised the days of the open frontier, a period that left an indelible mark on United States history and the American character. Ideal for students, researchers, historians, writers and history buffs who need historicalbackground and hard facts, The Old West belongs in any serious library collection on the West.

Spreading the Word: The Bible Business in Nineteenth-Century America

Civil war, the completion of transcontinental railroads, rapid urbanization and industrialization, the rise of managerial capitalism, and new entanglements abroad rent the fabric of life in nineteenth-century America. Through all the turmoil, the American Bible Society thrived. This engaging book tells how a modest antebellum reform agency responded to cataclysmic social change and grew to be a nonprofit corporate bureaucracy that managed, among other projects, what was one of the largest publishing houses in the United States.

The Chinese American Family Album.

Turn the pages of your family scrapbook or picture album and faces and memories leap out at you. Even if you never knew or don't remember some of your relatives, the snapshots and keepsakes make them familiar, and the old family stories never fail to bring a laugh and a warm memory. Now turn through the albums of other families - many other families - and see their grandfathers' and great-grandmothers' faces and read their stories. Why did they leave the old country? How did they get to America? What did they do when they got here? Why did they live the way they did? What did they think of the new homeland? What did other people think about them? How did they get along? The family album holds some of the answers. The Chinese American Family Album is a scrapbook of family letters and diary entries, official documents, newspaper articles, and excerpts from literature of the past and present - a personal remembrance of an extended family of Chinese immigrants and their descendants. As we read, we begin to know this family almost as well as our own. The letters written by the new immigrants to the folks left behind in China allow us to feel the ache of leaving home and family behind. Clippings from newspapers and personal memories tell of the pain of fear and prejudice in the new country. We learn about the building of the transcontinental railroad and how Chinese immigrants were the backbone of the work force, toiling long hours under the worst conditions. We see Chinatowns spring up wherever the immigrants landed, and we see how the traditions and culture of China were both preserved and altered as the immigrants became Americanized. But we also share the joy of first sighting the newhomeland. We follow families through the generations and see how they are living now and what they have brought to our country. We read about famous Chinese Americans who have risen to the top of their field, such as athlete Michael Chang, author Amy Tan, musician Yo-Yo Ma, and Sena

Prospects of development of the power industry in the zone of influence of the transcontinental railroad

The authors examine the possibilities of developing a power industry in the zone of influence of the transcontinental railroad (TCR). Two aspects of development are studied in particular: (1) the electric power supply for construction and subsequently for the operating railroad in coordination with simultaneous provision for the needs of adjacent regions; (2) the construction of a transcontinental transmission line with the use of a tunnel and railroad for its construction and with the creation of a unified transport--power corridor. Of great interest are the possibilities of constructing hydrostations in regions of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia), Chukchi Peninsula, and in the southern part of the Magadan region. The route of the proposed main line is located in the zone of influence of a number of prospective hydropower installations. 2 tabs.

Road to Power: The Trans-Siberian Railroad and the Colonization of Asian Russia, 1850–1917 by Steven G. Marks

434 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE operational performance offers little evidence that workers at one line toiled more contentedly and productively than those at the other. Steven W. Usselman Dr. Usselman, associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, has published articles in TOC and other journals on business management and technical change in the American railroad industry and is currently completing a book on the subject. Road to Power: The Trans-Siberian Railroad and the Colonization ofAsian Russia, 1850-1917. By Steven G. Marks. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991. Pp. xxi + 240; illustrations, notes, bibliogra­ phy, index. $31.95. Steven G. Marks’s well-researched study, Road to Power, takes issue with the traditional explanation for the construction of the TransSiberian Railroad. The primary motivation behind the undertaking was neither defense against external enemies nor a desire to develop a primitive region. Instead, the project was conceived as a political enterprise to extend state control over every aspect of Russian society. In this sense, “the Trans-Siberian project almost seems to belong more to the Soviet period than to the tsarist” (p. 225). Although the concept of a trans-Siberian railroad was born during the reign of Alexander III, the planning of the project sputtered for years amid bureaucratic wrangling. Marks’s story comes alive when he takes up the careerofthe ambitious, self-promoting minister offinance, Serge Witte. Shrewdly, Witte outflanked and outmaneuvered his op­ ponents. One of his favorite tactics was to replace officials opposed to the project with weak mediocrities who could be pliantly manipulated. His shrewdest stroke was selecting the twenty-three-year-old Grand Duke Nicholas as chairman of the Committee of the Siberian Railroad. The appointmentingratiated Witte with the future tsarand, forall prac­ tical purposes, guaranteed the completion of the project. As Marks makes clear, the railroad could not have been built without Witte’s de­ termined leadership. But Witte’s performance, especially when com­ pared with the construction of America’s transcontinental railroads, was not ofvirtuoso caliber. In fact, the project was characterized by such flaws in design and construction as to constitute “A Monument to Bun­ gling” (the title ofchap. 9). The deficiencies of the railroad were a con­ tributing factor to Russia’s defeat in the Russo-Japanese War. This use­ ful and compact study is clearly organized and is illustrated by excellent maps, photographs of such leaders as Witte and Nicholas II, and pho­ tographs of railroad scenes and construction sites. Benjamin D. Rhodes Dr. Rhodes is professor of history at the University of Wisconsin—Whitewater. ...

GSC Exploratory Wells in the West 1873-1875

Although the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) was founded in 1842, it was not until 1872, two years after the transfer of Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) lands to the Dominion of Canada, that the first GSC geologist, Director Alfred R. C. Selwyn, came to the western interior. One year later a drilling program he had been promoting in Ottawa saw two wells brought to completion and a third one started.During the period 1873-1875 five wells were drilled by or for the GSC at: Fort Garry (the first to be spudded and at 37 feet the shallowest), Shoal Lake, Rat Creek, Fort Carlton, and Fort Pelly (the deepest at 501 feet and the last to be abandoned). The main objective was to locate sources of water and coal for the future transcontinental railroad then planned to follow a northwesterly route from Winnipeg to Edmonton.Four wells were drilled with a rotary, diamond sieamdrill which had been used in the hard, coal-bearing rocks of Nova Scotia but proved unsuitable for penetrating the glacial drift, loose sands, and soft clays of the prairies.Besides having to deal with technical problems related to the transport of heavy equipment, a GSC drilling party became embroiled in a dispute between Government and Natives over land rights. After encountering an Indian blockade led by Chief Mistiwassis the crew retreated behind the stockade of HBC's Fort Carlton to drill a 175-foot well in August and September 1875.In 1874 an agreement was made between the GSC and John Henry Fairbank, Canada's most prominent oilman, for the drilling of a well at Fort Pelly. A percussion steamdrill, then in common use in the Petrolia, Ontario, oil fields, was the equipment of choice. Work at a drill site north of the fort in the Swan River valley started 25 August 1874 but on 30 October winter forced suspension. The stored equipment was used again the following year when drilling resumed on 6 July. The contracted 500 foot depth was exceeded by 1 foot on 9 October 1875 when the well was abandoned.

This is the place: Brigham Young and the new Zion

The unfolding of the American West is paralleled by the evolution of the religion. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was founded in 1830 by Joseph Smith. Public hostility to his claims of divine revelations drove the Mormons from New York State to Missouri to Illinois, where Smith was murdered by a furious mob. Leadership was eventually assumed by Brigham Young, who guided his flock westward in search of the 'New Zion'. Legend has it that, when they reached the vast open spaces of the Great Basin, he ended the journey by declaring, 'This is the place'. Building on his critically acclaimed book about the origins of the faith, Ernest H Taves offers further stylometric analysis of texts from the Book of Mormon and recounts the spellbinding story of the cross-continental trek and establishment of the empire. Covering the years between Smith's assassination in 1844 to the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, Taves also includes discussion of polygamy and its effect on Utah's petition for statehood, and the economic impact of the 1849 gold rush on the community. A story of both monumental triumph and intense tragedy, This is the Place is a critical yet sympathetic examination of an integral part of American history.

Creating a giant computer highway

Is one man’s vision of a national network of information beginning to take hold? Will this technological transformation be as profound in the 21st century as the transcontinental railroad was in its time? Will a new infrastructure result to increase American competitiveness? Read about this scientist who is an entrepreneur with a nonprofit company in this survey, reprinted by permission, from the Business Section of The New York Times of 2 Sept. 1990. The New York Times Company.

A Great and Shining Road: The Epic Story of the Transcontinental Railroad.

A Great and Shining Road: The Epic Story of the Transcontinental Railroad.

To Alaska by Train

To Alaska by Train Ro d n e y Stein er Professor, Department of Geography California State University Long Beach, CA 90840 Presidential address delivered to the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers, Fairbanks, Alaska, September 22,1989. Yousee things; andyou say “Why?” ButI dream things thatnever were; and I say “Why not?” G.B. Shaw, Back to Methuselah T H E CELEBRATION OF HUMAN ATTAINMENTS is more inspiring but less illuminating than the examination of human shortfalls. Our envisioned but unfinished endeavors far outnumber our significant achievements, and they are in sum more diverse. They may tell us much about ourselves and our occupancy of the earth. There are few better examples of ambitious but unfulfilled enterprises than the century-old effort to link Alaska with the conterminous United States by means of an overland railroad. Alone among the long-distance carriers, only pipelines and railroads have yet to bridge the void, and by reaching into the Yukon Territory, the transmission system for natural gas comes the closer of the two. The recordof“northering”by rail is appreciable and involved. To consider only the preponderant odds against a linkup would fail to 7 8 APCG YEARBOOK • VOLUME 52 • 1990 reveal why theprospect for arailroad managed to engage legislatures in both Canada and the United States as recently as the 1970s, or why this prospect continued to generate active Alaskan interest into the 1980s. Nor would it recognize that the North American railroad network has continued to draw closer to Alaska, reducing the unbuilt interval to more inviting dimensions (Figure 1). A chronicle of this undertaking is needed in appraising prospects for the future. It is equally valuable as an account of the processes by which kindred projects are formulated, initiated, and frustrated. Crossing the Bering Strait Public interest in an overland railroad to Alaska was evidenced well before the gold rush era in the north. Early attention focused on the Far East as a destination and on the Bering Strait crossing as both an obstacle and a symbolic goal in itself. Congress in 1886 authorized a study (United States 1961, p. B-2). Its stated aim ofreaching Russia and Japan was inspired in part by construction of the Northern Pacific transcontinental railroad, which would have provided a point of departure for the new line. Another likely stimulus was the emerging prospect for a trans-Siberian railway. In response, Major John Wesley Powell of the United States Geological Survey prepared a report based upon existing information, most notably the ground surveys made twenty years earlier for a Western Union telegraph line from the United States through Alaska and Siberia to Europe (Robb 1968). Powell abstained from making recommendations, confining his report to the citation of three possible routes to Alaska, and no further action appears to have followed. More ambitious even than aroute to theFarEast was the vision put forth by William Gilpin (1890), who proposed that a “cosmopolitan railway” should connect America with Europe by bridging the Strait, with southward extensions through the Americas, eastern Asia, and Africa. Gilpin correctly saw there were no insuperable natural obstacles to reaching the west coast of Alaska from a terminus in his adopted state of Colorado, but he gave scant attention to particulars. STEINER: To Alaska by Train 9 Figure 1. Railroads of northwestern America, including freight-car barge routes on the Pacific Coast. The Skagway-Whitehorse link and the unfinished line to Dease Lake are not now operating. 10 APCG YEARBOOK • VOLUME 52 • 1990 One nagging problem, forexample, was dismissed with the curt claim that “The bridging of the Bering Strait is by no means a difficult achievement.” His book focused instead on the alleged benefits stem­ ming from a gargantuan railroad. These included the creation of a counterforce to the British maritime monopoly and even the world­ wide disbandment of standing armies. Gilpin’s exhortation, though absurd in retrospect, might well have profferedjust the right mixture of imagination, eloquence, and chauvinism needed to carry the day, had the northern gold rushes materialized a decade earlier than they did. Ironically, while interest in a Bering Strait crossing has all but evaporated in recent decades, such advances in technology as the perfection of...