While St. Louis sits virtually in the middle of the United States, its residents in the 1840s were thinking of reaching the eastern and western edges of the country in the most powerful and efficient way of the time—by rail. Over a decade before the beginning of the Civil War, the race to create the country’s first transcontinental railroad had begun.
In 1849, the Pacific Railroad was chartered in the state of Missouri with the goal of building and operating a railroad from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean. However, the Gateway City’s cholera epidemic of that same year delayed the beginning of construction to 1851. While the Union Pacific won the race to become the first transcontinental railroad in North America, the Pacific Railroad planted a seed that would help St. Louis grow to become one of the United States’s most important rail towns.
Where is railroading and interurban rail transit today in St. Louis? Where did it go? For the first time, a printed non-fiction work will convey—in both word and incredible images—the birth, growth, and decline of railroading in the nation’s Gateway City. Trains and Trolleys chronicles the rise of one of the nation’s earliest cities on rails and how the eventual departure of those companies left the city on its rails.