Tiny Octopuses: The Successes, Struggles, and Failures of Short Lines and Branch Lines in Rural Nevada, California, and Oregon Between 1869 and 1920
Tiny Octopuses tells the story of the short line and branch line railroads that operated throughout Nevada, California, and Oregon between 1869 and 1920. After the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad in 1869, numerous small railroads arose to link cities, towns, and rural stations to each other and provided vital transportation to the Eastern United States and throughout the West. These railroads, and the communities that they connected, have often been overlooked by historians who focus on the major transcontinental railroads. This dissertation examines the stories of the rural U.S. West which remain untold. These smaller railroads operated for decades during which time they connected rural communities to the mainlines, providing critical transportation for the rural areas as well as essential freight and mail service. These railroads enabled faster Euro-American settlement, reshaped the communities that they connected, facilitated resource extraction, and unintentionally accelerated environmental destruction. Some of these routes became so economically valuable that the larger railroads purchased these smaller railroads to gain access to the remote areas. These small railroads also impacted the West in unexpected ways such as providing transportation to Indigenous Americans, assisting the early environmentalist movement, and bringing communities together to plan and construct their own railroads. Each of the small railroads has their own unique history and each railroad influenced the area it served based on the region's specific financial, environmental, and economic situations. The further examination of the relationships between the small railroads, employees, and residents of communities will provide context for understanding how settlers and the environment impacted each other.
Railroads, Transcontinental Railroad, U.S. West
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