Sunset Limited
Regular price
€31.99
19th century
A01=Richard J. Orsi
agriculture
american history
american studies
american west
Author_Richard J. Orsi
business
california
Category=NHK
Category=NHT
Category=NHTK
Category=WQH
central pacific
community
corporation
economics
environment
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
ethical business
history
irrigation
land grant
land reclamation
mussel slough
nature
nonfiction
old west
profit
railroad
railroad history
railroads
settling the west
southern pacific
trains
transcontinental railroad
transportation
united states
water rights
western history
Product details
- ISBN 9780520251649
- Weight: 953g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 06 Feb 2007
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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The only major U.S. railroad to be operated by westerners and the only railroad built from west to east, the Southern Pacific acquired a unique history and character. It also acquired a reputation, especially in California, as a railroad that people loved to hate. This magisterial history tells the full story of the Southern Pacific for the first time, shattering myths about the company that have prevailed to this day. A landmark account, "Sunset Limited" explores the railroad's development and influence - especially as it affected land settlement, agriculture, water policy, and the environment - and offers a new perspective on the tremendous, often surprising, role the company played in shaping the American West. Based on his unprecedented and extensive research into the company's historical archives, Richard Orsi finds that, contrary to conventional understanding, the Southern Pacific Company identified its corporate well-being with population growth and social and economic development in the railroad's hinterland.
As he traces the complex and shifting intersections between corporate and public interest, Orsi documents the railroad's little-known promotion of land distribution, small-scale farming, scientific agriculture, and less wasteful environmental practices and policies - including water conservation and wilderness and recreational parklands preservation. Meticulously researched, lucidly written, and judiciously balanced, "Sunset Limited" opens a new window onto the American West in a crucial phase of its development and will forever change our perceptions of one of the largest and most important western corporations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Richard Orsi is Professor Emeritus of History at California State University, Hayward, coauthor of The Elusive Eden: A New History of California (third edition, 2002), and editor of the California History Sesquicentennial Series.
