#firsttranscontinentalrailroad

[railwayhistorical]

Western Approach to Dale Creek Bridge

The first image was made by Andrew J. Russell in 1869 (source). The second by myself, Richard Koenig, in November of 2010.

[railwayhistorical]

The Great Divide Basin A caveat to the widely held belief that water falling on the continental divide ends up in either the Atlantic or Pacific... In central/lower Wyoming there is an area, sitting astride the divide, where water is ambivalent, and so it goes nowhere (save evaporation). This basin is nearly 4,000 square miles in area. These two images were taken at the western edge of the basin—which would be the true divide if the basin got full enough with water to overflow. The first image is near Robinson, Wyoming, and the second two miles to the east, at Tipton. The former, Robinson, is closest to the actual divide, but the highway department put their huge sign, CONTINENTAL DIVIDE, at the latter. I always rely on the fine maps of the USGS for details such as this, particularly in areas where the divide runs over relatively flat ground so as to make it difficult to discern. This happens to be where the first transcontinental railroad came through in 1867 (I-80 followed right around 100 years later). I believe someone on the Union Pacific, aware of the topography, named the spot Tipton to mark the divide, but have not been able to confirm.

Two photographs by Richard Koenig; taken September 23rd 2025.

[railwayhistorical]

Elephant Rock at Monument Point

This can be found along the former roadbed of the Central Pacific. The timetable lists the locale simply as “Monument”. We are twenty-one miles from Promontory Summit here.

Image by Richard Koenig; taken September 7th 2013.

[railwayhistorical]

Tunnel Seven, Donner Summit

Platinum/Palladium print made as a demonstration for my Alternative Photographic Processes course (back on 2018).

One image by Richard Koenig; taken October 7th 2011.

[railwayhistorical]

Summit Tunnel

This is an image made near the western portal of the Tunnel Six, Donner Summit (therefore sometimes called Summit Tunnel). It should be noted that it was hand dug by Chinese workers in the 1860s. Until 1995 or so, this line was still active; it was part of the original transcontinental railroad across North America.

This portion was built by the Central Pacific, who employed up to ten thousand Chinese, and later became the Southern Pacific.

One image by Richard Koenig; taken October 7th 2011.

[railwayhistorical]

Contemporary Views Along the First Transcontinental Railroad

While construction of the Pacific Railroad ostensibly began during the Civil War, it was not until that great conflict was over that it really got rolling. In a race for government subsidies and land grants, the Central Pacific built eastward from Sacramento, California, while the Union Pacific built westward from Omaha, Nebraska. The two railroads met at Promontory Summit, just north of Great Salt Lake, Utah Territory, on May 10th 1869. It was a watershed moment. I follow in the footsteps of photographers Alfred A. Hart and A. J. Russell who expertly recorded the construction of the road. But this is not a re-photography project—it is, rather, photography as archaeology. In making a comprehensive series of photographs along the original route, my goal is to give the viewer as strong of a connection as possible to this 19th century engineering marvel through the remaining visual evidence of the human-altered landscape. And while not visible, I also hope to evoke the various peoples involved with the railroad, as well as those affected by it.                                                           ~ ~ ~ I have always been drawn to western landscape photographs, particularly the work of Carleton Watkins and Timothy O’Sullivan. I tend to see their imagery as existing on opposite sides of an aesthetic coin—with the former rendering the beautiful and the latter portraying the sublime. These two 18th century linguistic terms, beautiful and sublime (usually considered in relation to one another), were used to categorize one’s emotional response when viewing artwork. Imagery that promoted pleasurable and familiar feelings was referred to as beautiful, while pictures that evoked feelings of awe or terror, often brought on by the immense scale of nature, were referred to as sublime. The story of the first transcontinental railroad is one of contradictions and oppositional forces not unlike the conceptual interrelatedness of those two aesthetic terms. The surveyors explored an Eden, but initiated its destruction. The road was a crown jewel of the industrial age, but the actual building, the grading and tunneling, was done almost completely without machines. The railroad conquered time and space, but this led quickly to the decimation of the American bison which pushed the people who depended upon them to the brink. This was the first transcontinental railroad in North America, or anywhere for that matter. The pounding of the Golden Spike signaled the completion of a great human achievement, but it must have sounded like a death knell to Native Americans. It put a bow on Manifest Destiny and served as a primer for the questionable business practices that would follow in the Gilded Age.                                                         ~ ~ ~ In the end, I want these images to be a pictorial accompaniment to well-established textual histories of the building of the railroad, the foremost being David Haward Bain’s Empire Express. His book tells the complete tale, but when I’m in the field I most often think of the people who built the line with their hands and their backs—primarily the Chinese, who performed so well for the Central Pacific, and the Irish, who toiled proudly for the Union Pacific. The railroad is still active over much of the route—which was preceded by pioneer trails, joined by the Lincoln Highway, and eventually succeeded by Interstate 80 and air travel. While I have photographed along much of the line, I tend to linger where the steel has been pulled up, those portions of the line that has been abandoned for a less steep or curvy alignment. I enjoy the calm of those deserted areas most—through modern absence, I find it most easy to imagine a 19th century presence. Richard Koenig, Genevieve U. Gilmore Professor of Art, Kalamazoo College—see forty web-based images here from across the route—from west to east.

[railwayhistorical]

Westbound Z Train

I was able to photograph this same train several times as I made my way across Wyoming. In this third and final time seeing the train, I was just west of Green River—and luckily, the sun has fully emerged after fighting some snow.

The train has passed through the town of Green River, crossed over the river of the same name, and will now have to fight its way up out of that valley searching out that of the Blacks Fork. This is along the original route of the first transcontinental railroad.

Image by Richard Koenig; taken May 8th 2019.

[railwayhistorical]

Plum Creek Railroad Attack Site

The monument, found near present day Lexington, Nebraska, marks an event that occurred on August 7th 1867 at a place then known as Plum Creek. That night, a band of Cheyenne Indians staged a devastating attack on the fledgling Union Pacific Railroad and some of its workers.

The building of this line was the beginning of the end of the well-being of the Plains Indians: this monument marks a night when they lashed out at what they must have felt was beyond merely an affront to their way of life—but an existential threat.

It is this aspect of the first transcontinental railroad that, in tension with it being one of the greatest engineering feats of the 19th century, causes me to feel very much conflicted and ambivalent about it, as well as its place in history.

Image by Richard Koenig; taken August 20th 2017.