1/30/2024 0 Comments The railroad storyI’d guess not all the workers appreciated this environment. These were tents and shanties that became home to “R estaurant and saloon keepers, gamblers, desperadoes of every grade, the vilest of men and of women,” according to newspaper editor Samuel Bowles in 1869. “Hell on Wheels” towns formed at the end of the lines. By necessity, the people doing the building moved as the rails moved. They all needed workers, lots of them, for jobs that were hard, dangerous and constantly on the move. More coast-to-coast lines were in progress, and even more regional rails. Photo credit: Kansas State Historical Society Hell on wheelsĪtchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe railroad construction workers standing on tracks being built in Haskell County, Kansas. But it was far from the last to be built. It was the first railroad to connect all the way to the west coast, stretching from Omaha, Nebraska, where it met up with existing rails all the way to Sacramento, California. By the time Holliday broke ground for the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad (ATSF) in Fall of 1868, the Central Pacific Railroad was only about seven months away from being finished, in May of 1869. Nearly all the railroads in the West were built between 18. Holliday wasn’t building the only railroad in the United States in the 1860s. So that’s the first route I decided to try.Ĭyrus K. Out of that list, I knew for sure I wanted to write something about railroad workers in general, and workers at the Santa Fe shops in Topeka specifically. I also thought about other paths I could follow in the adventure of railroad history. Holliday and the beginning of the Santa Fe railroad. In late 2022, I started learning about the railroad in the U.S. The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway Company’s Blue Goose #3460.
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