Moving slowly over the Great American Desert, with not an object in sight except sagebrush and distant mountain peaks, we seem much like a ship at sea. The massive train headed by our faithful steam horse, moving along so grandly, seems like a thing of life. —Letter 6a, June 17, 1880.WEGW 63.1

America’s expansion and growth has been a history of successive population moves westward. The Civil War briefly interrupted this process, but upon the cessation of hostilities the vast, unoccupied areas of the West once again stirred the attention of the American people. Great portions of land lying between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean awaited exploitation, and the key to such development was transportation.WEGW 63.2

To cross the West by canvas-topped covered wagons meant a slow three- or four-month trek from the banks of the Mississippi to the Sacramento in California or the Willamette in Oregon.WEGW 63.3

While some merchants and gold seekers took passage aboard ships and sailed around Cape Horn to the California coast, the Overland Trail remained the only practical route for the vast majority of Americans and newly arrived European immigrants seeking a new start. Only the steam locomotive, the “iron horse,” could meet the nation’s need to move large quantities of people and goods over long distances quickly and inexpensively. The railroad became, by the latter half of the nineteenth century, America’s premier transportation system, linking eastern cities with farms, mines, cattle herds, and towns of the West. The vital link in this system was the transcontinental, or Pacific railroad.WEGW 63.4

The transcontinental idea was purely a dream until the late 1840s. Prior to the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848, the United States had only an uncertain hold on the Pacific Coast, and the intervening land was for the most part unknown and desolate.WEGW 63.5

The question of a transcontinental route became embroiled in the sectional controversy between the North and South during the 1850s. As a rule, Northerners favored a central route over the Rocky Mountains to California, while Southerners favored a route across the Southwest. This sectional division made legislation impossible until open hostilities resulted in the parting of the nation in April 1861.WEGW 64.1

The Civil War made the isolation of the West a matter of national concern. Mineral-rich California and Nevada were not safe from marauding Confederates, the entire Pacific Coast was vulnerable to foreign intervention, and the Plains Indians grew more restless as troops were transferred from their protective duty on the frontier to the battlefields in the East. By an act of Congress in 1862, the federal government contracted the Central Pacific Railroad to build east from Sacramento, California, and the Union Pacific to build west from a point later fixed by President Lincoln on the west bank of the Missouri River at Omaha, Nebraska.WEGW 64.2

The Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 and the Supplementary Act of 1864 provided a generous federal land grant and loans in the form of bonds for each mile of track laid. The Central Pacific was the first to begin construction, in 1863; the Union Pacific began a year later. The two lines joined rails in a national celebration at Promontory, Utah, on May 10, 1869. What had begun as a wartime project for the security of the Union became a harbinger of the prosperity to follow in post-Civil War America.WEGW 64.3

On May 15, 1869, regular train service began on America’s first transcontinental railroad. The 1,775 miles from Omaha to Sacramento (in 1870, Oakland became the western terminus) usually took four and a half days to complete. Although it was not possible—except in cases of special excursions—to board a car in New York or other eastern city and journey uninterrupted to California, travelers could still cross the continent from coast to coast in 8 to 10 days.WEGW 64.4

Omaha was the eastern terminus of the Union Pacific, but for most travelers the overland adventure began in Chicago. There a passenger from further east would transfer to a Chicago-to-Council Bluffs (on the east bank of the Missouri River) connecting line.WEGW 64.5

Travelers would complain for several decades about the haphazardous ordeal of making the necessary transfers between Chicago and Omaha. The weary traveler who at last arrived at Council Bluffs was confronted with crossing the unbridged Missouri River. Each morning, stagecoaches arrived at the train station to convey passengers to a ferry situated some distance downstream.WEGW 65.1

“But a small portion of the passengers could get inside [the coach],” wrote William F. Rae, an Englishman who made the journey late in 1869, “the remainder having the option of either sitting on the roof among the luggage, or else being left behind.... Through deep ruts in the mud the omnibus [stagecoach] was slowly drawn by four horses to the river’s bank, and thence on to the deck of a flat-bottomed steamer. Seated there, a good view was had of the Missouri.” Another traveler wrote that on reaching the western bank of the river “the outside passengers [were] advised by the driver to move about from one side of the roof to the other, in order to guard against upsetting the overladen vehicle. A general feeling of relief was manifested when the station of the Union Pacific Railway was reached.”WEGW 65.2

Even after a bridge was completed, in 1872, across the Missouri River, from Council Bluffs to Omaha, western travelers still suffered inconveniences. The Union Pacific refused to allow the cars of eastern railroads to cross the river to its Omaha station. Arriving in Council Bluffs, passengers had to remove themselves and their luggage to the cars of the Union Pacific’s subsidiary bridge line. They had to repeat the process at the Omaha station, all at the expense of their patience and 50 cents (later lowered to ten cents).WEGW 65.3

Reflecting on the transfer experience, John Erastus Lester, of Providence, Rhode Island, observed that it “caused more hard words to be spoken than can be erased from the big book for many a day.”WEGW 65.4

Since only one through train left Omaha daily for the Pacific Coast, aggravating 24-hour layovers in Chicago, Council Bluffs, or Omaha could be avoided only by the most precise adherence by each railroad to its own timetable. Unfortunately, this happened as an exception rather than as a rule. For several decades travelers would complain about the haphazardous ordeal of making the necessary transfers between Chicago and Omaha.WEGW 65.5

Bustling confusion reigned as the time for departure from the Omaha station approached. Excited passengers rushed about in search of luggage, which, despite the system of “checking,” often went astray. Discovery of the missing luggage was followed by a frantic effort to get the baggage clerk to attach the necessary check to the trunk or valise. Passengers who successfully completed the “baggage check” proceeded to the ticket office in order to obtain berths aboard the Pullman sleeping car. The number of such berths was limited, and bitter disappointment awaited those who failed.WEGW 66.1

Above the voices of shouting passengers and railroad employees could be heard the hawking calls of the news or train boys who worked the platform and car aisles selling a wide range of items such as books, newspapers, lollipops, canned beans and bacon, fruit, coffee, sandwiches, and cigars.WEGW 66.2

In the early years, when the journey west was still considered a daring enterprise, railroad insurance agents joined the train boys in vigorously canvassing passengers. William Rae correctly suspected that rumors of the possibility of wild Indian attack or train wreck were deliberately spread in order to promote the sale of insurance policies.WEGW 66.3

The ability to pay, as always, determined the accommodations aboard the passenger cars. The more affluent travelers found quite comfortable accommodations aboard sleeping, or stateroom, cars, while the less well-to-do rode in the standard coaches or more spartan immigrant cars.WEGW 66.4

The sleeping car was the creation of George M. Pullman, of Chicago. It was first introduced in the Middle West in 1865, but the Union Pacific was the first major railroad to purchase such cars. They were called Pullman Palace cars, and their wood exteriors were painted a rich brown to distinguish them from other coaches.WEGW 66.5

Those who could afford the extra $25 first-class fare and $4 per day for the Pullman Palace car were eager to obtain a berth. The interiors were finished in polished wood and harmonious colors and were well lighted. A wood- or coal-burning stove and, in some models, hot water pipes beneath the floor, provided each car with heat. Each car was equipped with a private or semiprivate toilet and sleeping accommodations for about 30 passengers. The velvet upholstered seats were so constructed as to be readily converted into comfortable beds at night. Curtains could then be pulled around the bed, providing the traveler with a certain degree of privacy.WEGW 66.6

Some of these cars provided an even more commodious and elegant atmosphere, with individual carpeted stateroom or drawing room accommodations. Susan Coolidge offered a woman’s view of a typical drawing room in an article for Scribner’s Monthly in 1873. Her quarters contained four broad windows, six ventilators, a long sofa, two armchairs with movable backs, mirrors, and storage space. Between two drawing rooms was a dressing closet with toilet facilities. When bedtime came, the porter entered, she wrote, and “in some mysterious way” converted the sofa and the armchairs into beds. He gave the occupants a batch of clean towels and was on his way. In such accommodations one could travel from Omaha to Sacramento for $100, a sizable sum in 1870.WEGW 67.1

The Central Pacific did not originally use Pullman Palace cars. The company chose a sleeper manufactured by the Jackson and Sharp Company, instead. The cars became known as Silver Palace cars because of their painted white metallic interiors. Although they were more attractive and were outfitted with private sitting and smoking rooms, they lacked the extreme ornamentation and the mechanically superior rubber block springs of the Pullmans.WEGW 67.2

Coach fare was less than Pullman, only $75. Of course, accommodations were simpler. Gone were the velvet upholstery, carpets, private drawing rooms, and polished wood interiors. On coach fare, travelers had a certain amount of freedom of movement, but seats were unreserved. But even this advantage had a drawback—a scramble for the better seats occurred at boarding time.WEGW 67.3

The immigrant car was devised to meet the demand of even cheaper fares west, especially for the thousands of immigrants enticed by the railroads to come to America and buy federally granted lands. Devoid of most comforts and all frills, the immigrant car was cheap at only $40 per ticket. Arrangements varied with railroad companies and time, but in general, the interiors of all such cars were extremely plain, boxlike, and poorly lighted. Some of the cars were fitted with upper slated berths, supported by heavy posts or big chains. Of course each car had toilet facilities and a wood- or coal-burning stove.WEGW 67.4

Some of the immigrant cars were equipped with hard wooden benches, but most had woven fabric seats supported by springs. These seats could, with the use of an additional board, be adjusted to provide a bunk. Enterprising entrepreneurs and railroad agents in Omaha and at whistle stops along the way supplied boards and straw-filled mattresses or sacks at prices ranging from $1.25 to $2.50, depending on the passenger’s ability to bargain.WEGW 67.5

Immigrants were not the only ones who sought the lower fare cars. Many passengers financially able to pay first-class or coach fares also rode the immigrant cars west, especially as the quality of equipment and degree of comfort improved over the years.WEGW 68.1

The Union Pacific-Central Pacific trains averaged a speed of 22 miles per hour. Track and bridge conditions affected the speed of trains. A train might travel 40 miles an hour over smooth tracks, but had to slow to 8 or 9 over rougher sections. Although speeds nearly doubled by 1880, time-consuming stops and starts at more than 200 stations and water tanks prevented any noticeable reduction in total hours spent on the journey.WEGW 68.2

The transcontinental railroad trains provided three meal stops a day. In the 1870s the Union Pacific was the first line to adopt Pullman’s new “hotel car.” This car contained a kitchen at one end; meals were served on removable tables set between the drawing room slots. However, the Union Pacific scheduled the car for only one trip each week.WEGW 68.3

Dining stations along the route remained the standard method for feeding passengers on western railroads well into the late 1880s and early 1890s. Passengers who did not travel with their own food supplies were given 30 minutes at dining stops to rush from their coaches, elbow their way through a station platform crowd, and wolf down a meal before the conductor called “All aboard!”WEGW 68.4

With the exception of the fine food fare of the chain of Harvey House restaurants along the route of the Santa Fe, the menus in most railroad station restaurants varied from wretched to middling fair, with a monotonous sameness about them: “Beefsteak, fried eggs, fried potatoes at almost every meal,” reported New Yorker Susan Coolidge.WEGW 68.5

Station restaurants were operated by private individuals under contract to the railroads, with no required standard of service. The buildings were not much more than rough frame structures filled with long tables. Large steaming platters of food were rushed from the kitchen to the tables for the passengers when the trains came in.WEGW 68.6

The fare was simple and plentiful, and met two major requirements: it was substantial and could be hastily consumed. The most common items missing from the menus, especially at the prairie and desert stations, were fresh fruits and green vegetables. At most dining stops the price, whether for breakfast, lunch, or supper, was uniformly a dollar greenback or, on the California-Nevada section of the Central Pacific, 75 cents in silver.WEGW 69.1

Susan Coolidge advised travelers to pack their own lunch baskets for the overland trip. Indeed, lunch baskets were a common sight on the overland trains. Guidebooks urged travelers to carry a “little lunch-basket nicely stowed with sweet and substantial bits of food,” since eating places were sometimes eight hours apart when trains were on schedule.WEGW 69.2

One seasoned traveler, Ellen G. White, who had crossed the plains by rail 15 times by 1880, always carried a well-stocked larder that included such items as hard-boiled and fresh eggs, canned fruits, bread and rolls, walnuts, oranges and other fresh fruits, graham flour for a breakfast gruel, lemonade, and some pressed chicken for broth.WEGW 69.3

Those with private food stocks used the stove at the rear of the car to prepare their meats. Milk and warm water could be purchased, along with a variety of sundries from vendors at station stops. The generosity of those who were willing to share the contents of their lunch baskets was undoubtedly appreciated by the unprepared, especially when trains were running late or stopped for hours as a result of an occasional washout or wreck.WEGW 69.4

The seasoned, well-informed traveler carried more than a well-provisioned larder: changes of clothing and plenty of blankets were also necessities. Overland travelers encountered a variety of weather, ranging from freezing cold to searing heat. One guidebook recommended that upon leaving Omaha in the summer, a lady should wear a light spring suit; on the second day, as the train approached the Rockies, it suggested a change to a winter suit. On the third day, across the Utah-Nevada desert, she should don a summer suit, and then on the fourth day, in the Sierras, the winter suit and “all your underclothing” would be required. The fifth and last day would bring her into sunny California and the summer suit again.WEGW 69.5

Passengers on the overland complained a great deal about the cold and heat. The coldest weather was encountered in the western mountain ranges and after dusk in the desert. Winter made the cold even more unbearable. Although each coach was equipped with a wood or coal stove, the drafty, high-ceilinged cars were hard to keep warm. Occasionally the porters or conductors failed to supply the necessary wood or coal, and the passengers were forced to resort to blankets, warm clothing, and water tins heated at hotels or stations along the way. Even when the stove worked, it was not uncommon to awaken and find the windows frosted over.WEGW 70.1

The cold, however, was preferable to the burning summer heat and dust of the high plains of eastern Nebraska and Wyoming, or the Utah-Nevada desert, where it was heavily laced with the pungent smell of sagebrush and eye-stinging, bitter-tasting alkali. Ellen White observed somewhere west of Cheyenne that “the very air seemed hot, and seemed to burn our flesh. It seemed some like the time that will scorch men with heat.” The Massachusetts editor Samuel Bowles wrote that west of Cheyenne “the eye has no joy, the lips no comfort through it; the sun burns by day, the cold chills at night, the fine, impalatable, poisonous dust chokes and chafes and chaps you everywhere.”WEGW 70.2

Although equipped with ceiling ventilators, the railroad coaches lacked an adequate air circulation system. Opening the windows and ceiling vents under any weather condition risked subjecting passengers to billows of smoke and cinders from the locomotive and clouds of dust from the trackside and surrounding terrain.WEGW 70.3

The long hours confined to jostling cars traversing slowly over the vast expanse of the West provided overland travelers with ample opportunity for conversation, card playing, reading, sewing, letter writing, and viewing passing scenery through the broad car windows. A boy frequently walked through the cars with a good store of novels and newspapers for sale. Smoking and drinking were also common diversions. Before long, passengers had formed into the usual little groups and cliques, knowing one another by sight if not by name.WEGW 70.4

The variety of passengers aboard the coaches made observations by their fellow travelers a source of entertainment. On one of her trips Ellen White met a British military officer and his family and children’s nurse on their way from India to England. They found the hot Wyoming weather more oppressive than what they were used to even in India. The Indian nurse was a center of curiosity because of her appearance, for she wore a pink calico sari, and her hands were completely tattooed.WEGW 70.5

It was aboard the same train that Mrs. White became well acquainted with a hard-drinking French theater manager and his equally hard-drinking actress companion. Mrs. White appears to have been amused by their astonishment when she politely declined their “very kind” offer to join them in what she described as their “raid ... upon [the] bottles.”WEGW 71.1

Travelers aboard the transcontinental trains were a mixed lot. Not always able to choose seat companions, passengers occasionally found themselves with people they would normally avoid. The farther west the train rolled, the rougher and more obnoxious the local passengers became. The rough-booted, broad-rimmed, dusty-bearded, tobacco-chewing—and occasionally gun-toting—Westerner was both a curiosity and nuisance. Travelers were repelled by the Westerner’s insistent generosity to share his plug of tobacco and bottle of whiskey. “A fiercer, hirsute, and unwashed set I never saw,” said one Easterner.WEGW 71.2

Perhaps he had not yet reached Nevada, where there was a plentitude of Shoshones and Paiutes hanging about every station, using their treaty rights with the Central Pacific to ride the cars. Because these desert Indians were usually covered with dust and often unbathed on account of the lack of water, and habit, the passengers found them objectionable, and the railroad eventually restricted them to baggage cars or outside the passenger car on its boarding steps.WEGW 71.3

It was customary on Sundays to hold religious services in one of the cars. The Rev. Mr. Murray, aboard a train rolling through western Wyoming in 1872, delivered a sermon entitled “To Die Is Gain,” and a choir sang, “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” “Here in the very midst of the Rocky Mountain wilderness,” wrote John Lester, “our thanksgivings were offered up; and our music floated out upon the air, and resounded through the deep caverns and among the towering hills.”WEGW 71.4

It was less convenient for those who worshiped on a day other than Sunday. Unless traveling in a stateroom or coach that was empty or nearly so, Ellen White and other Sabbathkeepers found it necessary to pull the sable curtains about their section of seats for privacy. The curtains helped shut out the noisy banter, laughter, card playing, and other activities, thus creating a more peaceful atmosphere for Bible reading and rest.WEGW 71.5

Wrecks were inevitable, particularly in the early years of operation. In general, they were more annoying than serious, but loss of life was all too common. There were many causes for train wrecks, but most frequently they resulted from poorly constructed roadbed, washouts, landslides, inadequate braking and signaling systems, hotboxes (overheating of axle bearings), unguarded crossings, fire-prone wooden coaches, and human error on the part of trainmen. Train derailments were frequent. Occasionally bridges gave way under the weight of locomotives, and most tragic of all, trains often crashed headlong into one another.WEGW 72.1

Although employee fatalities were twice those of the passengers, the latter group suffered the larger number of injuries. Often the fateful difference between the two groups could be measured in minutes or a few short hours. Passing over a trestle just a short distance west of Wyoming’s Dale Creek Bridge, Ellen White and her fellow passengers saw at the bottom of the gorge the shattered remains of a freight train that had crashed through the same trestle only a week before. It was just under two hours ahead of a passenger train.WEGW 72.2

In terms of passenger miles, however, by the turn of the century rail travel was relatively safe—one fatality to each 51 million miles of train travel, one injury to each 12 million miles.WEGW 72.3

It is unlikely that the knowledge of these overall figures, and assurances of the railroad companies, completely calmed the fears of the passengers. There were at least two sites on the Union Pacific-Central Pacific route where passengers openly expressed their anxiety—the Dale Creek Bridge, and Cape Horn, in California.WEGW 72.4

Dale Creek, on the western slope of Wyoming’s Black Hills, ran in a granite gorge 120 feet deep. In the spring of 1868 the Union Pacific spanned the 650-foot-wide gorge with a pine timber trestle, the largest on the line. The structure swayed alarmingly when the wind blew up the canyon. William Rae remarked that “more than one passenger ... breathes more freely ... once the cars have passed in safety over this remarkable wooden structure.”WEGW 72.5

Government inspectors required the railroad to tie down and anchor the trestle with cables until a new steel bridge on stone pilings could be completed in 1870. The light, airy, box-truss frame of the new bridge still did not inspire confidence among the passengers that it could withstand the constant buffeting of the wind. “This ... bridge looks like a light, frail thing to bear so great [a] weight,” wrote Ellen White. “But fears are not expressed because of the frail appearance of the bridge, but in regard to the tempest of wind, so fierce that we fear the cars may be blown from the track.WEGW 73.1

“In the providence of God the wind decreased. Its terrible wail is subdued to pitiful sobs and sighs, and we passed safely over the dreaded bridge.”WEGW 73.2

Perhaps it was the crossing of Dale Creek that inspired Rev. Murray’s sermon “To Die Is Gain,” and the choir’s choice of the hymn “Nearer, My God, to Thee.”WEGW 73.3

At Cape Horn, on the western slopes of California’s Sierra Nevadas, timid passengers were warned by the guidebooks not to look down upon the winding gorge of the American River 2,000 feet below. John Beadle agreed that although Cape Horn offered the finest view of the Sierras, the sight was not good for nervous people. The right-of-way for the rails had been chiseled out of solid rock by Chinese laborers suspended in baskets along the face of the cliff.WEGW 73.4

Cape Horn was the steepest, most winding part of a 105-mile stretch that dropped from 7,017 feet to 30 feet above sea level. According to William Humason, nearly half the descent was made without the aid of power. “The conductor and brakeman ran the train with brakes on most of the way.”WEGW 73.5

Wrote William Rae, “The velocity with which the train rushed down this incline, and the suddenness with which it wheeled around the curves, produced a sensation which cannot be reproduced in words.... The axle boxes smoked with friction and the odor of burning wood pervaded the cars. The wheels were nearly red hot. In the darkness of the night they resembled discs of flame.”WEGW 73.6

There was great adventure as well as danger in transcontinental travel. Passengers were filled with awe at the immensity of the land. Westward from Omaha, the trains rolled past the fertile farmlands and onto the grassy plains of central and western Nebraska. In the summer months passengers were often treated to the wild spectacle of prairie fires, usually begun by sparks from the locomotive igniting the dry grass.WEGW 73.7

“These looked grand and awful,” wrote Mrs. White. “We could see the lurid flames stretching like walls of fire for miles across the prairies; and as the wind would rise the flames would leap higher and higher, brightening the darkness of night with their awful light.”WEGW 74.1

Awe gave way to boredom as an endless expanse of plains was broken only at two- or three-hour intervals by a water tank and a cluster of sod and adobe houses. The monotony was interrupted occasionally by the sighting of unfamiliar wildlife. Antelope and prairie dogs were the most common, but elk, wolves, coyotes, and bears were also seen. Only small herds of buffalo were spotted along the Union Pacific right-of-way. Hunters and sportsmen continued to decimate their ranks throughout the 1870s. Although the railroad companies frowned upon the practice, amateur hunters sometimes fired from the cars at the antelope and buffalo that wandered within range of trackside.WEGW 74.2

Indians also provided some diversion for the passengers, especially the Shawnees and Paiutes in Nevada. But for the most part, these sad remnants of a once-proud heritage were few and far between: the Pawnees on a reservation in central Nebraska; the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Crow in western Nebraska and Wyoming.WEGW 74.3

The scenery grew more fascinating for the passengers as they left the plains behind. The first glimpse of the snow-topped Rocky Mountains always sent a wave of excitement through the coaches. Mrs. White wrote to her children, “I hesitate whether to place my pen upon paper to give you even the faintest, slightest description of the wild, romantic scenery of the Rocky Mountains. Immense mountain-tops rise above mountains. Some mountains of lesser dimensions are wavy and appear smooth and regular in shape. Mountains of masonry have the appearance of being hewed, squared, chiseled, and polished by art and piled one above another in grand towers, stretching upward toward heaven as though directing the minds of all who look upon them to God.”WEGW 74.4

Unfortunately, the grand sight yielded to the anxiety of crossing Dale Creek and the barren plains of Wyoming. Eastern travelers were struck most by the lack of trees and tilled land, and by the endless expanse of sagebrush. “The scenery over the plains has been uninteresting.... Mud cabins, adobe houses, and sagebrush in abundance,” commented Ellen White. Her observation reflected the general sentiment of a nation that still regarded with little value the treeless plains and deserts of the West.WEGW 74.5

Once across Wyoming, overland travelers were treated to new, even more spectacular scenery than they had witnessed in the Rockies. Most were at a loss for superlatives to describe the towering castlelike rock formations of Utah’s Echo and Weber canyons. “The scenery here is grand and beautiful,” observed Mrs. White.WEGW 75.1

“These are in lofty domes and pinnacles and fluted columns. These rocks resemble some cathedral of ancient date standing in desolation. The imagination here has a fruitful field in which to range.... Standing at a distance from these wonderful shaped rocks, you may imagine some ruined city, bare, desolate, but bearing their silent witness to what was once.”WEGW 75.2

Shortly after entering the narrows of Weber Canyon, everyone caught a glimpse of Thousand-Mile Tree, a lone pine of more than 60 feet in height amid the desolation of rock and sage. A sign in the tree’s lower boughs marked the distance from Omaha. Sentinel Rock, Eagle Rock, Hanging Rock, Pulpit Rock, Devil’s Gate, and Devil’s Slide kept the passengers fascinated and entertained while the trains thundered through the narrow canyon.WEGW 75.3

After transferring from Union Pacific to Central Pacific cars in Ogden, the westbound travelers faced the most arduous and monotonous portions of their journey. It took a full day to cross the deserts of Utah and Nevada. The Great American Desert was a befitting name for this barren, desolate land. In the summer, heat and alkali dust reduced whole trainloads of passengers to misery. Sweltering in their seats, they faced the alternative of keeping doors and windows closed, thus enduring semi-asphyxiation, or opening them to clouds of alkali dust swirling up with the passing cars. Even winter did not spare travelers from the dust, unless a blanket of snow lay over the ground.WEGW 75.4

It was with understandable relief that everyone put the parched desert behind and passed “over the hump” of the Sierra Nevadas. Once again many travelers were at a loss for superlatives to describe the rapid, winding descent of the heavily forested western slopes, which included the frightening yet exhilarating Cape Horn experience. Trains generally made the descent at night, which enhanced the adventure.WEGW 75.5

“Our last night on the train,” wrote Mrs. White, “was spent in ... viewing the scenery.... The moon was shining clear and bright.... We passed Cape Horn in the light of the moon. The wintery scene, ... viewed by the light of the moon, is grand. We can look 2,000 feet below. The soft light of the moon shines upon mountain heights revealing the grand pines and lighting up the canyons. No pen or language can describe the grandeur of the scene.”WEGW 76.1

By midmorning, westbound trains arrived at the Oakland terminal. The tired, weary passengers rejoiced universally with the conclusion of the journey. It was a long, hard four and a half days from Omaha, and most passengers had begun their trip from one to three days further east or south. After a week of noise, dust, and tobacco and locomotive smoke, the disembarking passengers looked forward to a warm bath and quiet rest. The weeklong adventure would provide them with a lifetime of memories, and future generations with a nostalgic look at the way it was before the modern interstate freeways, jet planes, and Amtrak.WEGW 76.2

Bibliographical Note