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Rails from the West A Biography of Theodore D Judah By Helen Hinkley
Rails from the West A Biography of Theodore D Judah
By Helen Hinkley
Hard Cover with Dust Jacket (has plastic covering)
207 pages
Copyright 1969
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction 5
1. Theodore Dehone Judah 9
2. California's First Railroad 17
3. Judah's Practical Plan for Building The Transcontinental Railroad 41
4. "Crazy Judah" and the Railroad Convention 53
5. Judah Makes Another Try in Washington 67
6. At Last. A Possible Route Over the Sierra 79
7. Four Storekeepers of Sacramento 93
8. The Big Four and the Central Pacific 109
9. The Railroad Bill of 1862 121
10. It Takes More Than Talk to Build a Railroad 135
11. Politics Moved Mountains 149
12. What About the Dutch Flat Swindle? 157
13. The Final Struggle for Control 171
14. The Central Pacific Reaches Promontory 179
15. The Golden Spike 193
Bibliography 201
Index 205
DUST JACKET INTRODUCTION
In 1854 young Theodore Judah, with his wife, Arma, left New York State where he was already a prestigious railroad engineer for California, commissioned to build the first railroad on the West Coast. He took with him his dream for a railroad that would span the continent.
While he was building the Sacramento Valley, the Central California and the Eastern Extension railroads he alternately searched the Sierra for a suitable pass through the seemingly impregnable barrier and talked transcontinental railroad to the California state legislators and to men on the street who called him "Crazy Judah" because of his obsession.
In 1856 he began commuting via the Isthmus between Sacramento and Washington. From Sacramento he continued his reconnaissance in the Sierra and in Washington he established a Central Pacific Railroad Museum and pushed for legislative action. Though Judah was never a legislator he wrote more railroad legislation than any other man.
In one triumphant year he found a route through the mountains; with the Big Four - Stanford, Huntington, Hopkins, and Crocker - and others incorporated the Central Pacific Railroad; and pushed through the Senate and the House the railroad bill of 1862 which made possible the construction of both the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific.
Without Theodore Judah the Golden Spike would not have been driven in 1869 - perhaps not for several decades. This buoyant, perservering genius who combined an obsession with notable achievement was truly the entrepreneur of the transcontinental railroad.
Helen Hinckley has not only given an accurate, carefully researched account of Judah's work, but with her unusual gift as a story teller has identified so deeply with Theodore and Anna that the biography has become a poignant story of striving, of disappointment, of bouncing back, of success and of sorrow. Readers will not only learn many little known facts about railroad promoting, surveying, financing and building but will be caught up in the very human story of a young couple in frontier times who made a sophisticated dream come true.
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