Untitled Document
The Old Iron Road
An Epic of Rails, Roads, and the Urge to Go West
By David Haward Bain.
470 Pages, 7.00x10.00", 39 photographs, 1 map, index. September 2022 release (originally published 2004).
"In the summer of 2000 David Haward Bain and his family left their home in Vermont and headed west in search of America’s past. Spiritually, their journey began on a Kansas trail where the author’s grandmother was born in a covered wagon in 1889. Between the Missouri River and the Golden Gate, they retraced the entire route of the first transcontinental railroad and large stretches of the Oregon and California trails, and the equally colorful old Lincoln Highway. Following vanished iron rails and wagon wheel ruts, bumping down backroads and main streets, they discovered the deep, restless, uniquely American spirit of adventure that connects our past to our present.
"A superb writer and an exacting researcher, Bain conjures up a marvelous sense of coming unstuck in time as he lingers in the ghost towns and battlegrounds, prairies and river ports, trainyards, museums, deserts, and diners that line his cruise west to California. Bain encounters a fascinating cast of characters, both historic and contemporary, as well as memories of his grandparents and the journeys that shaped his own heritage.
"Writing in the tradition of William Least Heat-Moon and Ian Frazier, and with an engaging warmth and a deep grasp of history all his own, Bain has fashioned a quintessentially American journey."
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Part I
1. The Odyssey Begins
2. Jumping Off
Part II
3. Rails and the River
4. The Lincoln Highway
5. The Road from Red Cloud
6. Hell on Wheels
7. The View from the Bluffs
Part III
8. Magic City
9. Road Tested on the Red Plains
10. Crossing the Divide
11. Green River to the Rim
Part IV
12. Through the Canyons to Paradise
Part V
13. Following the Humboldt
14. Silver State
Part VI
15. Over the Sierra
16. From Sacramento to the Sea
17. Golden Gate
Epilogue
References
Index
