I have always lived within the sound of a train whistle, whether it was the Pennsylvania (upon whose tracks countless pennies were flattened), the Baltimore and Ohio, the Long Island, the New Haven, Conrail, the Boston–Charles River freight yard, the IND, or the IRT. And for twelve years it’s been Amtrak on the Delaware and Hudson tracks, six miles away across rolling farmlands and Lake Champlain. Train stories, train lore, train movies, and train songs chugged through my childhood—of course I had a Lionel set—and as an adult I’d rather take Amtrak than my car or a plane. No contest.
The first book I read on the first transcontinental railroad was one in the Landmark Books series. I was eleven. Little did I know that twenty-five years later, after I had begun writing books about politics and history, that an editor would see one reviewed, read the book, call me up, and issue a challenge: Would I consider writing a book on the first transcontinental railroad? Deep in the tunnels of my brain I heard a whistle calling. While it’s perfectly possible that it was only the IND slowing for the Seventh Avenue subway stop in Brooklyn, where I then lived, I like to think it was an echo of old Jupiter or Number 119 at the Golden Spike ceremony at Promontory. Nevertheless, I’m grateful to the challenger, Amanda Vaill—then of Viking and now a respected writer herself. With that challenge she allowed me to rejoin a lifelong love for trains, and a similarly long and deep fascination for the nineteenth century, particularly the Civil War and the old West.
Ellen Levine, my literary agent and dear friend of many adventures, was instrumental in making the dream a possibility. Our adventures were not over, and I trust will not be for many years to come.
At Viking, as the project took shape, I was so fortunate to have the faith and patience of Kathryn Court and Barbara Grossman, friends from my long-ago publishing days. Their encouragement across the years helped make this fourteen-year project what it is. And I’m grateful for all the good work and support of Stephanie Curci, and also Tory Klose, Janet Renard, Beena Kamlani, Gail Belenson, Jaye Zimet, Ivan Held, Paul Slovak, and Giovanni Favretti.
Soon after I began, I realized how many had previously attempted to tell the epic tale of the first transcontinental, and how much they relied on previously published work; a cycle of stories (some of them myths) thus became endlessly recycled and repeated. Aside from two very good biographies of Collis P. Huntington (by David Lavender) and Grenville M. Dodge (by Stanley Hirshson), there had been three books published in the midsixties, right before the Golden Spike centennial. But that was of no matter, for beckoning me were all the original sources, the handwritten letters, journals, business records, telegraph forms, official reports, and eyewitness journalism. Particularly helpful were the elaborately detailed inventories at the University of Iowa and the Nebraska State Historical Society (major Union Pacific repositories), at the University of California, Berkeley (the Central Pacific, where H. H. Bancroft’s staff tirelessly followed his collection fever), at the California State Railroad Museum, and at the California State Library, where I also found, and copied with a blunt pencil stub, score upon score of handwritten subject cards for California newspapers. I also count myself lucky to have done two years of research at the extraordinary New York Public Library while the peerless card catalogues were still in existence.
As I forged ahead, two other books caught up with me in the late eighties. One, the authoritative official corporate history of the Union Pacific by Maury Klein, might have slowed my own research for a year or two as he had priority access to Union Pacific microfilm records, but it was worth the wait. His telling of one side of the transcontinental story (and the years beyond, to the end of the century) was well done, and his superior business sense helped me wade through high corporate financial records and dealings. My debt to him is real.
As I plowed through the mostly handwritten material, one particular collection became supremely important: the contents of Collis P. Huntington’s New York office of the Central Pacific, with its voluminous letters from all the principals. Given to Syracuse University, and later microfilmed and widely distributed to libraries around the country, I found that earlier researchers had barely touched the surface of its thousands of handwritten pages, and perhaps to no wonder. The handwriting of the five principals often defeated a cursory reading, complicated by the fact that most of the six-, eight-, or ten-page letters had been microfilmed out of page order. I became familiar with their scrawls and pieced together the letters. What I found there proved that previous writers had been mostly defeated at getting into the collection—refutations of myths passed down for generations, and exciting, extraordinary voices unheard for 130 years, quotations any historian or journalist would behave shamelessly to obtain. The Union Pacific side yielded many new surprises, too; by going even to a much-quoted document and reading the original, one often finds quotations left out, inconvenient facts glossed over, and puzzle pieces useful somewhere else.
All along the way I was conscious of what I felt were the subject’s marching orders: Put the story into a larger national context and take advantage of the exciting research done in recent decades on Native Americans, women of the plains and high country, immigrants, and other people below the radar scope of traditional historians’ “great men” narratives. Placing these perspectives within the context of the transcontinental race, and the railroads’ story into focus with larger national political and cultural events, was an important part of the mission.
I am most grateful to the following for helping me with research: Donald Snoddy, William Kratville, Deirdre Routt, Union Pacific Railroad Library; Annagret Ogden, Mary L. Morganti, Bonnie Hardwick, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; Emily Levine, Chad Wall, James A. Hanson, Nebraska State Historical Society; Robert A. McCown, University of Iowa Library; Richard Terry, Kenneth Pettitt, California State Library; Carol A. Rudisell, Michael T. Ryan, Robin Chandler, Roberto G. Trujillo, Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries; Jennifer King, Lori Olson, Maxine Trost, Emmett Chisum, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming; Mildred K. Smock, Council Bluffs Public Library; Peter Blodgett, Harriet McLoone, Daniel Woodward, Huntington Library; Christie Brandau, Ellen Sulser, Matthew Schaefer, State Historical Society and Library of Iowa; Anthony R. Crawford, Evan Williams, Kansas State University Library; Rick Stattler, Rhode Island Historical Society; Karon Tomlinson, Lake County Historical Society, Mentor, Ohio; Mae Bolton, Sacramento Public Library; Shirley Sun, Chinese Culture Foundation of San Francisco; Rene Morales, Gladys Hansen, San Francisco Public Library; Raymond Hillman, Stockton Pioneer Museum; Frank Gibson, Omaha Public Library; Gary K. Roberts, Nevada Historical Society; Deanna LaBonge, Oscar W. Ford, Joyce C. Lee, Millie L. Syring, Nevada State Library; Giaconda Capitolo, Salt Lake City Public Library; Linda Thatcher, Utah State Historical Society Library; Everitt Cooley, University of Utah Library; Gwen Rice, Wyoming State Library; Eric Leuschner, Oklahoma State University Library; Saundra Taylor, Indiana University Library; Margaret N. Haines, Oregon Historical Society; Hilary Cummings, University of Oregon Library; Thomas Heenan, Omaha Public Library; Benjamin Trask, The Mariners’ Museum Library; Diane Skvarla, U.S. Senate Curator’s Office; Carol A. Turley, University of Southern California Library. Staff too numerous to mention at the National Archives, the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, the Mid-Manhattan Library, and the Brooklyn Public Library helped immeasurably in the early years of this project. Surely I have neglected to list other names, for which I apologize.
At Middlebury College, where I have taught since 1987, I was fortunate to have the excellent facilities of the Egbert Starr Library, not only because it is a federal repository but also because of its Interlibrary Loan department, which I used to the utmost. Deep thanks, then, to the indefatigable Fleur Laslocky, the tireless Lexa deCourval, and many student workers. Elin Waagen and Hans Raum helped many times. A number of college administrators aided my project, whether through verbal encouragement, adjusting my schedule, or support through the college’s faculty development fund (which, late in this project, dispensed several research, travel, or materials grants). Thanks, then, to Bethany Ladimer, Alison Byerly, Robert Schine, John McCardell, Ron Liebowitz, Eric Davis, John McWilliams, Theodora Anastaplo, Susan Perkins, Susan Coburn, David Price, and Edward Martin. Carol Knauss, Stanley Bates, Devon Jersild, and Michael Collier of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference were supportive over many years. Many thanks, also, to the alert Cates Baldridge.
I am grateful to Northern Cartographic, of South Burlington, Vermont, to Eileen Powers, Edward Antczak, and Robert Gagliuso, for the breathtaking GIS-based, terrain-shaded maps. Collectors of old books may note that I was inspired by the inkwork of one H. Scott, whose fine maps appeared in James McCague’s Moguls and Iron Men (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), but I sought to provide more realistic depictions. Thanks to my Middlebury colleague Stephen Trombulak, I discovered Northern Cartographic.
This has been a long project. Expressions of encouragement from some people over the years, sometimes brief, undoubtedly lessened the toil, as did their example. Thanks to Jane Garrett, Charles Elliott, William H. Goetzmann, Justin Kaplan, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Geoffrey Ward, Richard M. Ketchum, Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., Shelby Foote, David McCullough, Richard Kluger, Martha Sanger, Shere Hite, Ron Powers, Paul Mariani, Robert Pack, William Kittredge, Terry Tempest Williams, Whitney Balliett, Tim O’Brien, Michael Arlen, Naomi Bliven, Mally and Jim Cox-Chapman, Don Mitchell, Alan Weisman, Jim Dumont and Karen Lueders, Brett Millier and Karl Lindholm, Nancy Rome and Allen Moore, and to all my supportive friends. Julia Alvarez—a sister in art if there ever was one—never failed to buoy me up. Thanks to her and Bill Eichner.
Jim and Trish Smyth, Sarah Duffy, Sheila Cohen, Bob Reiss, and Stacey Chase gave shelter during particular research trips, for which I was and am grateful.
Rosemary Haward Bain, John L. Duffy, and Katherine S. Duffy were my most faithful and critically helpful readers; they know that my gratitude for this, and a lifetime of gifts, buries the needle on the Richter scale. My father, David Bain, died eight months before this project began, but his enthusiasm for stories and personalities in history informed Empire Express. Christopher Bain, Terry Bain, and Lisa Bain never failed in their support, nor did their respective spouses, Andrea Bain, Marc Santiago, and William Schwarz.
Finally, it is dificult to put into words the gratitude I owe to my family for their faith and support, and for, too often, giving up comforts and companionship. Mary Smyth Duffy, my unfailing and unflagging partner, and Mimi Bain and David Bain, my wonderful children, endured much so that this book might be completed. Having finally done that, and being freed to the extent that one is freed from any consuming project, I hope I can begin to make it up to them.
July 4, 1999
Orwell, Vermont