What's in a Movie Poster? Western Images, Themes, Qualities, Characters, and Values

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

 

Western movies tend to do well at the box office, especially when their leading character is a star of the magnitude of John Wayne or Clint Eastwood.

How much do posters and lobby cards designed to promote these films help sell tickets? The answer is anybody's guess, but, apparently, even in the digital age, Hollywood believes that there is magic in such advertisements. Movie posters and lobby cards have long been staples of the promotion of movies of all genres, Westerns included. They remain so today.

Like movie posters that promote other genres, those that advertise Western films can pinpoint some of the features of such fare that screenwriters have found appeal to viewers. The same features, one might suppose, would also appeal to readers of Western novels.

Let's take a look at a Western movie poster, with an eye toward what, specifically, they advertise that's central to this genre.

The poster for Pale Rider, featuring Clint Eastwood, shows

• a lone gunman fanning his Colt
• a lone gunman who is dressed well by the standards of his time
• seven men standing in a line
• a block of buildings typical of Western towns
• a caption, in small letters, at the heart of the sun-like circle to the right of Eastwood's head
• the colors yellow, orange, red-orange, and reddish-brown

What can we infer from the images, design, colors, and text?

 

Typically, the Western hero is a solitary figure who's good with a gun and who is willing to risk his life to defend himself, another person, or his own values. He tends to be larger than life. The poster focuses on Eastwood's character, a lone gunman who is shown as a giant among men; the seven other figures shown in the poster are not only literally beneath him, but they are tiny in comparison, and, while he is shown in full color, they are little more than shadows. Next to him, the other men are insignificant, more like pesky gnats than worthy foes.

Not only is the lone gunman bigger than anyone else, but he is also central: he is shown near the center of the poster's focus. Thanks to his size, his facial features are easily discernible; he has an identity; he is an individual, a person with character. His weathered appearance, leathery skin, and sharp features mark him as an independent, hard-bitten man who's been around and knows the score. In his eyes, we see steely determination; his bared teeth show aggression. He is focused, intent, one with his gun. A man on a mission, he stands and delivers. These are the qualities of personality, the poster suggests, that are important to the audience for this actor's films. Moviegoers (or readers) who enjoy Westerns want a man who, even alone, will take a stand, risk his own life, and combat forces which would defy or destroy the principles he holds dear.

The lone gunman dresses better than many of his day, which suggests that he enjoys financial success. He may make his living by his gun. He may, in other words, be a gunfighter or a mercenary. (Those familiar with the “spaghetti Westerns” in which Eastwood starred will know, of course, that, in Pale Rider, he plays a bounty hunter).

The sun behind him isn't a halo exactly, or, if it is, it doesn't fit him precisely, but the effect is similar; the concentric circles of the high desert sun frame him closely enough to suggest that there may be more to him than meets the eye, even if he himself is not altogether holy.

The poster's colors are bright and vibrant, but the sun's brilliant yellow, by degrees, merges with the brown of the hero's coat and the sky, the element of air merging with the element of earth. Perhaps the lone gunman is a demigod, the Wild West's version of Hercules. Western fans want their heroes to be Heroes, to be writ large, to be of nearly supernatural dimensions.

The fact that the movie is set in the West is presented almost as an afterthought. The stretch of low buildings with false fronts and the line of small figures in Western garb are more like quick sketches that suggest, rather than depict, the setting. It is clear that the film is not so much about the West itself as it is about this one individual, the lone gunman who stands out.

White adds touches of sunlight to the brim of the gunman's hat (which is not a Stetson; this man is a gunman, but he's no cowboy). White also highlights his left cheek, the top of his shirt, the cuffs of his shirt sleeves, and the handle and the cylinder of his second gun, the Colt stuffed in his gun belt, a phallus not quite hidden and ready to hand, doubling his manhood.

In the yellow circle of the sun, the poster's caption, in small letters, whispers part of a verse in the book of Revelations: “. . . and hell followed with him,” suggesting the consequences of the Pale Rider's visit and connecting him to a figure of the Biblical apocalypse: “And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.” If there was any doubt as to the lone gunman's identity, the caption spells it out: the Pale Rider is, in fact, Death personified.

 

Without seeing the movie itself, these suggestions are all the poster's viewer has by which to decide whether to see the film. According to Box Office Mojo, Pale Rider grossed over $41 million, a fourth of this amount during its opening. Although other factors contributed to the film's success, it seems that potential viewers liked what the poster showed them. If they were attracted by the themes, the type of hero, and the character traits suggested by this poster, it's likely that they would be drawn to similar themes, heroes, and character traits in Western novels as well.

 

Night Riders

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Riding a horse at night sounds dangerous—and it can be—but it's not necessarily risky, if riders take precautions.

During cattle drives, cowboys often rode at night, as, on occasions, did posses hot on the trail of suspected outlaws.

In the days of the Wild West, there were no superhighways, streetlamps, or other modern inventions to worry about (night traffic can startle horses, and bright lights can temporarily blind them, neither of which situations is good for the safety of the horse or the rider).

Still, riding at night had distinct disadvantages on the frontier. Despite their good night vision, horses couldn't see every obstacle on the trail. Low branches could knock a rider from his or her mount. The resulting fall could break an arm or a leg (or a neck). Depending on where one rode, there could be close encounters of the worst kind, too, with bears, cougars, or other nighttime predators. In the event that a horse encounters an animal that might be a predator, it is apt to bolt, rather than to stand its ground while it attempts to discern whether the other animal is a threat. For horses, discretion is the better part of valor.

Most often, night riders rode in the company of others, whether fellow cowboys, other members of a posse, comrades in arms, or other members of their outlaw gangs. They'd avoid any gait other than a walk, unless they were sure the path ahead was level and free of obstacles.

Not all night riders were men, and not all of them rode horses by night on the frontier. Women also rode horses at night. One, a sixteen-year-old Connecticut girl, Sybil Ludington, rode forty miles, through the night in April 1777, “to warn her father's troops about a British attack on Danbury,” earning the praise of General George Washington. Thereafter, she became known as “the female Paul Revere.”

As Virginia C. Johnson makes clear in Virginia by Stagecoach, “Old Moll” Tate may not have ridden a horse after sunset, but she drove “the night stage from Abington to Blountville,” Virginia, “for several years” as a means of earning a living for herself and one of her children after losing the rest of her family, including her husband, to a plague (137). She had excellent night vision, which allowed her to avoid a tree that had fallen into the road (137). After mail she was carrying had been stolen, “Old Moll” Tate carried a “dummy” mail bag to “foist on any would-be robbers” (137). An extraordinary woman, she had fourteen given names, having been named after “each of the women who attended her birth and one for each of her aunts”: Mary Malzeeda Susan Elizabeth Cynthia Parnintha Sarah Adeline Rosey Daisy Laura Lucretia Louisa Jane (137).

According to Pinkerton detective Charles (“Charlie”) Siringo's A Cowboy Detective, Butch Cassidy escaped riding bareback one night and, to avoid lawmen, continued to ride at night, sleeping during the day. A posse led by William Beeler, on the trail of outlaw Kid Curry and his gang, “waylaid” Cassidy and his fellow traveler, outlaw “Red” Weaver. The lawmen continued to hunt Curry, as he and his gang “committed bloody crimes” as they rode north, but Cassidy escaped the posse's custody and lived on “nothing . . . but crackers.” It was only after Cassidy received news at one of the gang's “blind post offices,” that he learned the men from whom he was hiding during the day weren't members of Beeler's posse, after all, but his own “friends” (368).

Siringo himself was no stranger to night riding. Advised that a party of three-hundred men planned to “take over” Murray, Idaho, in order to kidnap him, Siringo writes, “I would pretend to retire to my room for the night; . . . then, I would slip down the back stairs and [ride] up the mountainside.” He would remain awake . . . on the mountainside overlooking the town,” his Winchester “ready for action,” until morning, when he “would return to the hotel . . . and slip into [his] room” (184). After providing testimony to a grand jury, Siringo thwarted “Dallas and his gang,” who intended to ambush him, by riding a rented horse twenty miles to Wallace instead of taking the stagecoach, the route of which went through “a dense growth of timber and underbrush,” which would have made ambushing the stage an easy matter (184).

In Pat Garrett: The Story of a Western Lawman, Leon Claire Metz recounts a night ride undertaken by Garrett and his posse. Charlie Thompson, Bill Gatlin (aka Dan Bogan), and Wade Woods were wanted for cattle rustling, and Garrett had obtained warrants for their arrests. The suspects were believed to alter the brands of the cattle they stole using “a versatile brand called the Tabletop.” So effective was the technique in changing marks that the difference was undetectable “unless the animal was killed and skinned and the hide turned inside out so that the old and new brands could be compared” (143).

Learning that the wanted men were hiding out in “a rock house at red River Springs near the Canadian River,” Garrett and his posse, joined by Sheriff James East, rode forth at night, during a fierce snowstorm, which, Garrett believed, was the most effective occasion “to hunt a badman” (143). The posse rode throughout the night, “pausing stiff and nearly frozen at two o'clock in the morning to feed their horses and bolt down a warm meal.”

Bill Gatlin (aka Dan Bogan)

Despite approaching the hideout from a direction that prevented the outlaws from seeing their approach, Garrett and his posse were spotted by Bob Basset, a member of the gang who was collecting firewood. Running back toward the house, Basset warned the other wanted men of the arrival of Garrett and his posse (143). To avoid a shootout, nine of the men inside the house left the domicile, including two of the suspects, Charlie Thompson and Wade Wood, who surrendered, but Garrett made the mistake of allowing Thompson to return to the house to fetch his coat, and Thompson then refused to return, saying he would fight and die beside Gatlin, who remained in the house. However, assuring Thompson of a fair trial, East was able to talk him into surrendering, and the arrests were made, after East entered the house and convinced Gatlin, with whom he had once herded cattle, to also surrender 143).

The outlaws were jailed in Tascosa, but Gatlin and Thompson escaped, using a file “someone [had] slipped them” to cut through their handcuffs (145). For their efforts, Garrett, East, and the rest of the posse retained in custody only two of the four fugitives they'd brought to justice.

Bob Switzer

Plenty of others rode horses at night (or drove stagecoaches after sunset), but none of them were equipped with the supplies recommended by today's experts—largely because most of these supplies didn't exist in the days of the American Wild West. For example, Equisearch: For People Who Love Horses recommends that night riders “carry a flashlight in case of emergencies,” being careful not to spook the horse in using the instrument. For greater visibility, the wearing of “reflective clothing” is also recommended (“Riding Your Horse at Night”). Battery-powered flashlights weren't patented until about 1899, and Bob Switzer didn't invent reflective clothing until the 1930s (he tested his new Day-Glo paint on his wife's wedding dress!), and such attire didn't become popular until World War II, when aircraft carrier crews began to wear it.

Another website, The Spruce Pets, recommends night riders carry not only flashlights and wear reflective clothing, but also equip themselves with headlamps, and wearable LED lights (“Safety Tips for Horseback Trail Riding at Night”). Headlamps did exist in the early 1880s, but they weren't the type of lights riders would want to use. They burned acetylene or oil, and, although the flames produced by such fuels were wind- and rain-resistant, it seems safe to bet they'd frighten horses.

British researcher H. J. Round invented the first light-emitting solid-state diode (LED) in 1907, but the public couldn't buy an LED light until dim red LED lights became “commercially available” during the 1960s, well past the era of the Wild West.

Horse & Rider is even more particular in regard to recommendations for safe night riding. A host of “special gear” is needed, the website's “Trail Riding at Night” article suggests, including “a handheld flashlight” as well as “a first-aid kit, a multipurpose tool, an EasyBoot,” glow sticks, and duct tape.

1888 Johnson & Johnson first-aid kit

We've already addressed the origin of flashlights. Commercially available first-aid kits appeared in 1888 (although riders could certainly assemble their own kits before then, if the thought occurred to them).

Sheffield contrivance

Such multi-purpose tools as the Modell [sic] 1890 “Sheffield contrivances,” as Herman Melville identifies them in chapter 107 of Moby Dick, consisted of pocket knives containing, all in one, “blades of various sizes, . . . screw-drivers, cork-screws, tweezers, awls, pens, rulers, nail-filers, [and] countersinkers,” and the Swiss army pocket knife debuted in 1890, featuring a spear point blade, a reamer, a can-opener, a screwdriver, and water-repellent grips” (The Swiss Army Knife Owner's Manual, September 7, 2011). For Wild West night riders who rode after 1890, these multi-purpose tools could have been carried in the saddlebags.

The EasyBoot was first sold in 1970, and could “be applied to the barefoot hoof. . . and used as a spare or . . . when a barefoot horse needs additional hoof protection,” so, of course, this item was unavailable to the night riders of the Old West.

When Edwin A. Chandross of Brooklyn, New York, in experimenting with luminol in the 1970s, mixed hydrogen peroxide with oxalyl chloride and dye, the mixture “emitted a [feeble] visible light,” but glow sticks were not invented until 1976, when, after a variety of materials and devices were patented, “the first . . . device to resemble glow sticks as we know them today,” the Chemiluminescent Signal Device, was patented by Vincent J. Esposito, Steven M. Little, and John H. Lyons. Clearly the night riders of the latter half of the nineteenth century would not have had access to glow sticks.

Duct tape was invented in 1943, after Vesta Stoudt, a worker at the Green River ordnance Plant in Illinois, wrote a letter to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, asking him to pursue her idea of replacing the thin tape that sealed packages of cartridges used to launch rifle grenades with a stronger “cloth-based waterproof tape” that would not tear away when soldiers opened the ammunition packages, leaving them “frantically scrambling to claw the boxes open while under enemy fire.” She'd proposed the idea to her superiors at work, but it seemed to have gone nowhere. Roosevelt forwarded her letter to the War Production Board, which contracted the task of producing the tape to Johnson & Johnson. Although duct tape might be highly recommended for night riders' use, those who rode horses at night prior to World War II wouldn't have been able to adopt the suggestion (“The Woman Who Invented Duct Tape”).

Of the modern recommendations for items to carry on night rides, the horsemen and horsewomen of the Old West would have been able to take with them headlamps (although they probably wouldn't have wanted to do so, as the flames would have startled their horses), self-assembled first-aid kits, and multi-purpose tools of the type that Melville describes or the earliest Swiss army knife alternative. Mostly, though the night riders of the Old West (and of eras before then) would have had to trust their horses' excellent night vision, the animals' instinct, and their own experience as riders. Examples such as those of Ludington, Tate, Siringo, Garrett, and others suggest that the night riders' trust in their horses' night vision and instinct was well placed.

Jim Levy (Leavy): At The End of a Trail of Violence

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Pioche, Nevada, 1885

Abilene. Cripple Creek. Deadwood. Dodge City. Tombstone. There are towns with more famous names than that of Pioche, Nevada, but historians have verified that Pioche was as rough and tough as any other town in America's Wild West.

Although Pioche's Jim Levy (also spelled Leavy) wasn't as famous as Wild Bill Hickok, Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, or Doc Holliday, he did develop a reputation as a man who was skilled with a six-gun and someone it was dangerous to cross, and Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson considered him a skilled gunfighter.

He started his career as a gunfighter in hope of inheriting $5,000. In a gunfight with fellow miner Mike Casey, Thomas Gosson (also spelled Gasson) was fatally wounded. His dying proclamation was to will $5,000 to anybody who killed Casey.

Pioche, Nevada

In the 1871 gunfight that occurred between Casey and Levy, in front of Freudenthals' General Store, Levy wounded his adversary, putting Casey out of his misery by pistol-whipping him, an act that earned Levy both a pistol shot to the jaw from one of the dead man's friends and the money Gossan had bequeathed to Casey's killer.

In Pioche, in January 1873, Levy was also involved in another duel to the death, this time against Thomas Ryan. Due to a lack of evidence needed to prosecute Levy for murder, the gunfighter was released. Sometime during the next two years, he left Pioche.

On March 9, 1877, in Cheyenne, Wyoming, Levy became involved in yet another gunfight, this time against Charlie Harrison. Like Levy, Harrison had a history of violence, having killed several of foes. Insults Harrison made about the Irish during a card game in which Levy was also a player infuriated the Nevada gunfighter, and the men agreed to settle their score outside. They later faced off in front of Frenchy's Saloon.

Although Harrison got off the first shot—or the first few shots—his aim was inaccurate. Levy's was not, and he shot Harrison in the chest. To finish the job, Levy approached his fallen foe and shot him again. Witnesses took umbrage at this second, needless exhibition of Levy's skill, but he was never prosecuted for killing Harrison.

Tucson, Arizona

In Tucson, Arizona, Levy came to the end of his trail. This time, his dispute was with John Murphy, who was dealing cards in a faro game at the Fashion Saloon. The men agreed to settle their differences in a gunfight the next morning. 

Instead, Murphy and his friends, Bill Moyer and Dave Gibson, encountering Levy just after midnight as he approached the Palace Saloon's front door, opened fire on Levy, assuming the gunfighter was armed.

Levy believed the shots had been fired from within the saloon and fled outside—a mistake that cost him his life, when he ran straight into his enemies' gunfire. Although Murphy, Moyer, and Gibson were arrested and held in jail for killing an unarmed man, they escaped, and Murphy and Gibson evaded capture. Moyer was arrested and sentenced to life in prison.

Western Words: Origins and Histories

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullma

A great source for both readers and writers of Westerns is available online—free of charge. The Online Etymology Dictionary lets writers check the dates from which words were first and lets both authors and fans check out the often-interesting histories associated with the words.

For example, the first appearance of the word “six-shooter,” referring to “a revolver with six chambers,” is “attested” in 1844. Obviously, novels set before that year shouldn't refer to a six-shot revolver as a “six-shooter,” while stories involving later periods are free to do so.

Courtesy of the June 18, 1864, Scientific American, the dictionary's same page offers this intriguing nugget concerning the Gatling gun:

For the first time in this war [the American Civil War], the Gatling gun was used by Butler in repelling one of Beauregard's midnight attacks. Dispatches state that it was very destructive, and rebel prisoners were very curious to know whether it was loaded all night and fired all day.

“Brand,” as a verb, referring to the impression or burning “of a mark with a hot iron,” originally referred to the performance of this act as a means of marking criminals, to both stigmatize and identify them as such. The word thus acquired the “figurative sense” of fixing “a character of infamy upon.” by the 1850s, the verb became associated with marking items to indicate one's ownership of them. The use of “brand” as a noun didn't occur until 1828, when it referred both to the instrument of branding and to the resulting mark.

“Spitoon” was first used in 1811. Before there were “spitoons,” there were “spitting boxes.”

In the Middle Ages, a pommel would be found on the handle of a sword, not on a saddle; the term originally referred to “ornamental knob . . . . at the end of a sword hilt.” It first began to be used as the name of the 'front peak of a saddle” in the mid-fifteenth century.

There are lots of other words that may be of interest to Western readers and writers. Online Etymology Dictionary may not include every one of them, but it lists plenty. Make a list and dig in or return again and again to this etymological gold mine (“late 15c., "place where gold is dug out of the earth," from gold (n.) + mine (n.). Figurative use "anything productive of great wealth" is by 1882.”)

Spouses and Paramours of the Earp Brothers

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Sherry Monahan offers another interesting account of a different type of Western woman in her 2013 book, Mrs Earp: The Wives and Lovers of the Earp Brothers.” Among the women of whom Monahan provides profiles are Aurilla Sutherland (1850-1870), Sarah Haspell (1853-1919), Celia Ann “Mattie” Blaylock (1850-1888), and Josephine Sarah Marcus (1861?-1944), identified, collectively, as “Mr. & Mrs. Wyatt Earp”; Magdalena C. “Ellen” Rijsdam (1842-1910), Rozilla Draggoo (1853-1870?), and Alvira “Allie” Packingham Sullivan (1851-1947), identified, collectively, as “Mr. & Mrs. Virgil Earp”; Louisa A. Houston (1855-1894), the wife of Morgan Earp; Bessie Catchim (1840-1887) and Mrs. H. J. Earp, identified, collectively, as “Mr. & Mrs. James Earp”; and Kate Sanford (1855-?), the wife of Warren Earp.

More has been written about some of these wives and lovers than about others, mostly because little is known about the second group. Here are a few of the facts that are known about the latter group of ladies. Unfortunately, no known photographs of the Rozilla Draggoo has been authenticated.

Rozilla Draggoo

Virgil Earp

Rozilla Draggoo, who was born in France “around 1853)”; Virgil Earp's father, Nicholas Porter Earp (1813-1907), a justice of the peace, performed the ceremony in which the couple were lawfully wed on May 30, 1870. For a time, the newlyweds lived in Lamar, Missouri, “with Virgil's parents” and Virgil's siblings, Adelia (1861-1941) and Warren (1855-1900); brother Wyatt (1848-1929) and “his first wife, Aurilla” (c. 1849-1870) lived “nearby” (65).

Magdalena “Ellen” Rijsdam

A bit of a scandal and a lot of pathos surround Virgil's marriage to “his first wife, Magdalena 'Ellen' Rijsdam,” whom Virgil “secretly married” in 1860 (59). Ellen “was underage,” as was Virgil, and, presumably for this reason, both Virgil's and Ellen's parents opposed the couple's union (59-60).

Nineteenth-century Utrecht, Netherlands

Born in Utrecht, Netherlands, she immigrated with her parents, Gerritt Rijsdam and Magdalena Catrina Van Velzen, to the United States on November 25, 1842, living in Baltimore, Maryland, and Pella, Iowa, where the Earps then lived (59).

Although an 1889 newspaper article states that the couple lived apart, Virgil and Ellen produced a daughter, “Virgil's only known child,” Nellie Jane Earp, who was born on January 7, 1862 (60). At the time, the mother was seventeen years old—eight months the senior of her husband, which, Monahan speculates, may explain “why her father was so upset” (60). When “Ellen's pregnancy began to show,” the couple “announced their marriage” (60).

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Virgil joined the Union Army, and the elder Rijsdams told Nellie that her father had been killed in combat (60). Ellen, Nellie, and Ellen's parents then moved to the Oregon Territory, apparently without notifying Virgil; when he returned home to Pella, he “discovered Ellen was gone,” Monahan reports, but “whether he thought she abandoned him or died is unknown” (60).

Monahan's book is replete with other intriguing accounts of the Earp brothers' spouses and paramours and, like Roach's volume concerning authentic cowgirls of the American Wild West, provides historical facts and psychological and sociological insights into these special ladies and their times.

The Transcontinental Railroad: The Greatest American Achievement of the 19th Century!

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Active Member of the Western Writers Association

Click the image to enlarge it.

In 1862, Congress passed the Pacific Railway Act, authorizing and funding the construction of the transcontinental railroad.

Two companies would lay the track, surveying routes, constructing trestles and bridges, blasting tunnels through mountains or ledges out of sheer mountainsides, fighting Native Americans who resisted whites' encroachment upon their ancestral lands, and, of course, laying track. The Cheyenne removed sections of track and cut telegraph lines and attacked repairmen.[1] The Sioux and Arapaho joined them in attacking settlers, stealing from them, removing surveyors's stakes, derailing trains, and killing railroad workers.[2]

Click the image to enlarge it.

Along the way, the companies' workers also strung hundreds of miles of telegraph lines, connecting the western and the eastern halves of the nation both by both rail and wire and making transportation and communication available across the continental United States.

It was a huge enterprise, the biggest of the nineteenth century, and enormously expensive, costing between $96 million and $111.5 million[3] and requiring 10,000 horses and as many workers for the Union Pacific Railroad alone[4], Irish (on the Union Pacific railroad's crews). Chinese made up 80 percent of the Central Pacific Railroad's workers, and Civil War veterans and 1,000 freed African-American slaves worked for both railroads.[5] Whites were paid $35 per month, Chinese $30 per month; Chinese workers were also provided food, including special items that had to be brought by railroad from the east.[6] In Utah, Mormon laborers also helped to build the railroad.[7]

UPRR workers who took their meals aboard the company's supply train ate in a dining car, which sat 125 men per shift. Their tin plates were nailed to the tabletop, and between meals consisting of beef, hard bread, boiled beans, and black coffee, kitchen workers "cleaned" the plates with hand-help "mops."[8]

Click the image to enlarge it.

Workers had to contend with blizzards, landslides, thunderstorms, mountains, and Native Americans who sought to defend their lands from the iron horse and the settlements of whites the railroad inevitably brought.

The men who built the transcontinental railroad lived under harsh conditions. Quarters aboard the UPRR's supply train were crowded and infested with lice, so many men preferred to sleep in tents.[9] Bathing occurred rarely, and most camps smelled of sweat and worse, as drinking water was contaminated with bacteria that caused diarrhea.[10]

Click the image to enlarge it.

As much as possible, construction followed a set pattern: surveyors, operating as much as 100 miles in advance of other work crews[11], selected the path and marked it with stakes.

Then, grading crews leveled the pathway, building a raised bed, 12-feet wide (wide enough to accommodate two sets of side-by-side tracks), to lay track on. The graders' bosses leveled the bed with shovels or a heavy scraper haled by horses or oxen. When graders ran into rocks they couldn't move, they used explosives to blast them. Additional crews built bridges or blasted tunnels as needed.[12]

Click the image to enlarge it.

 Next, a work crew laid ties (six-foot-long, split logs or planks) on the bed. The men then laid 28-foot-long, 500-pound iron rails[13] on the ties, securing them in place by hammering iron spikes through the rails and into the wood. The track layers worked in pairs, five on each side of a rail.[14]

The construction of the transcontinental railroad took about six years. The CPRR broke ground in Omaha, Nebraska, on January 8, 1863, and its railroad joined the UPRR's line at Promontory Summit, Utah, on May 10, 1869.

There's much more to the story, including the solutions engineers developed for the tremendous problems they encountered due to adverse weather and seemingly insurmountable obstacles that certain terrain features presented. Greed and immorality also caused complications and significant cost overruns. Look for these stories in future posts!

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[1]The Building of the Transcontinental Railroad by Peggy Caravantes

[2]The Transcontinental Railroad by Christine Zuchora-Walske

[3]The Building of the Transcontinental Railroad by Peggy Caravantes

[4]Ibid.

[5]The Transcontinental Railroad by Christine Zuchora-Walske

[6]The Building of the Transcontinental Railroad by Peggy Caravantes

[7]The Incredible Transcontinental Railroad by Conrad Stein.

[8]Ibid.

[9]Ibid.

[10]The Transcontinental Railroad by Christine Zuchora-Walske

[11]The Incredible Transcontinental Railroad by Conrad Stein.

[12]The Building of the Transcontinental Railroad by Peggy Caravantes

[13]The Incredible Transcontinental Railroad by Conrad Stein.

[14]The Building of the Transcontinental Railroad by Peggy Caravantes