Contemporary Views Along the First Transcontinental Railroad

Abstract

Contemporary Views Along the First Transcontinental Railroad is a comprehensive series of photographs made along the original route of the Pacific Railroad. A pictorial accompaniment to well-established textual histories of the building of the railroad, such as David Haward Bain’s Empire Express, Koenig’s goal is to give the viewer as strong of a connection as possible to this historic 19th century engineering marvel through the remaining human-altered landscape. While no people appear in the images, Koenig hopes they nevertheless conjure the Chinese and Irish graders and track-layers who built the road, as well as Native Americans, who were so gravely affected by it.

Reproduced with permission of the National Railway Historical Society. Deposited in CACHE with permission of the publisher, limited to Kalamazoo College users only.

Koenig, Richard. “Contemporary Views Along the First Transcontinental Railroad.” NRHS Bulletin, Volume 79, Number 3, 2016, pp. 4-35.