White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (2011)

Richard White.
Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America.
New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011.

Book Information: Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com; Railroaded, book webpage at The Spatial History Project, Stanford University.

Author Information:

• Richard White, Department of History, Stanford University.
• Richard White, The Bill Lane Center for the American West, Stanford University.
• Richard White, Wikipedia.

Video and Audio

• Richard White, Corporations, Corruption, and the Modern Lobby: A Gilded Age Story of the West and the South in Washington, DC, Southern Spaces, 19 March 2009.
• Richard White and David Kennedy, Myths About the Transcontinental Railroad and the Building of the American West, The Commonwealth Club of California, 08 June 2011.
• Richard White and Lewis Lapham, "Working on the Railroad," The World In Time podcast, Lapham's Quarterly, 01 July 2011.
• Richard White, Transcontinental Railroads and the Environmental Consequences of Premature Development, The Forest History Society, 2012.
• Transcontinental Railroad, American Experience, WGBH, PBS, 2003 (YouTube video).
• End of Track, Wyoming PBS, 2013 (focuses on the first transcontinental railroad in what became Wyoming).

Major Events:

• First Transcontinental Railroad (completed 1869).
• Crédit Mobilier of America scandal (1872; Crédit Mobilier was a scheme for siphoning off money from the construction of the Union Pacific).
• Panic of 1873 (initiated by the collapse of Jay Cooke's Northern Pacific).
• Long Depression of 1873-1879.
• Great Railroad Strike of 1877.
  This event is not discussed in Railroaded, perhaps because it mainly involved eastern railroads. During this period wages were still higher in the west than in the east and perhaps western wages were more resistant to wage cuts; wage cuts in the east precipitated the strike.
• Panic of 1893.
• Pullman Strike (1894).

Transcontinental Railroads and Key People:

• Union Pacific Railroad.
  Thomas C. Durant (1820-1885).
  Oakes Ames (1804-1873).
  Grenville M. Dodge (1831-1916).
  Jay Gould (1836-1892).
  Charles Francis Adams Jr. (1835-1915).
  Sidney Dillon (1812-1892).
  E. H. Harriman (1848-1909).
• Central Pacific Railroad.
  The Associates or Big Four.
  Leland Stanford (1824-1893).
  Collis P. Huntington (1821-1900).
  Charles Crocker (1822-1888).
  Mark Hopkins, Jr. (1813-1878).
  Edwin B. Crocker (1818-1875).
• Southern Pacific Railroad.
  Stanford, Huntington, Crocker & Hopkins.
• Northern Pacific Railway.
  Jay Cooke (1821-1905).
  Henry Villard (1835-1900).
• Great Northern Railway.
  James J. Hill (1838-1916).
• Atlantic and Pacific Railroad.
• Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway.
  Cyrus K. Holliday (1826-1900).
• Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad.
  Charles Elliott Perkins (1840-1907).
• Texas and Pacific Railway.
  Thomas A. Scott (1823-1881).
  Jay Gould (1836-1892).
• Kansas Pacific Railway.
• Canadian Pacific Railway.
• Mexican Central Railway.
• Mexican National Railway.

Some Old Books on Railroads:

• Charles Francis Adams Jr. and Henry Adams. Chapters of Erie, and Other Essays. Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1871. (Google Books.)
• Charles Francis Adams Jr. Railroads, Their Origin and Problems. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1878, 1886. (Google Books.)
• Arthur Twining Hadley. Railroad Transportation: Its History and Its Laws. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1885. (Google Books.)
• James F. Hudson. Railways and the Republic. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1886. (Google Books.)
• William John Pinkerton. His Personal Record: Stories of Railroad Life. Kansas City, Mo.: The Pinkerton Publishing Co., 1904. (Google Books.) This book is discussed by White in Railroaded.
• Arthur M. Wellington. The Economic Theory of the Location of Railroads, Sixth Edition. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1887. (Google Books, 1901; Google Books, 1910.) This book is discussed by White in Railroaded.
• Emory R. Johnson. American Railway Transportation. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1903. (Google Books.)
• Walter Loring Webb. The Economics of Railroad Construction. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1906. (Google Books.)
• Walter Loring Webb. Railroad Engineering. Chicago: American School of Correspondence, 1909. (Google Books.)
• William G. Raymond. The Elements of Railroad Engineering. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1909. (Google Books.)
• Thomas F. Woodlock. The Anatomy of a Railroad Report. London: Effingham, Wilson & Co., 1895; New York: United States Book Company, 1895. (Google Books.)
• John Moody. How to Analyze Railroad Reports. New York: Analyses Publishing Co., 1912. (Google Books.)
• A.M. Sakolski. American Railroad Economics. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1913. (Google Books.)
• Henry C. Adams. American Railway Accounting: A Commentary. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1918. (Google Books.)