Thirty or forty years ago, in one of those grey towns along the Burlington Railroad, which are so much greyer today than they were then, there was a house well known from Omaha to Denver for its hospitality and for a certain charm of atmosphere. Well known, that is to say, to the railroad aristocracy of that time; men who had to do the railroad itself, or with one of the "land companies" which were its byproducts. In those days it was enough to say of a man that he was "connected with the Burlington."¹

A Lost Lady

Introduction

From the Civil War to 1900, America's railroads were the driving force of the new industrial age. Railroads such as the Pennsylvania Railroad, the New York Central, the Illinois Central and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad were the first great industrial corporations of the new age and the first to command thousands of workers and immense capital.²

Their tracks were the arteries that linked small towns on the prairies with great metropolises. The trains carried the mail and express, the station agent's telegraph key brought the news, and in every small town the train depot were the trains came and went, was the center of activity.

 Willa Cather, an astute observer, used the fabric of life around her in her books; no where more effectively than with her use of railroads.
 

Red Cloud and the Burlington

By 1870 the "Burlington", the common appellation for the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, was in search of a western terminus. The Burlington began in 1849 as a small connecting railroad to allow the merchants of Aurora, Illinois, to ship their goods to nearby Chicago. In 1855 it had reached the east bank of the Mississippi at Burlington, Iowa. Then the railroad built west across southern Iowa to link with the Union Pacific Railroad at Omaha and continue across the Missouri River at Plattsmouth to Lincoln and southeastern Nebraska.³

In 1870 when the Burlington entered Council Bluffs, Iowa, across from Omaha, it found itself one of several railroads competing for the lackluster business of the Union Pacific⁴. Hoping to achieve more traffic from the UP, it extended its tracks west through good farmlands to the UP tracks at Kearney, Nebraska, in 1872. Again, this failed to generate business.
 

The Burlington, like most western railroads, received land grants of every other section of land (640 acres) for twenty miles on each side of the track. Congress enacted land grant laws to induce railroads to expand throughout the west. This land had no value if settlers couldn't move their crops to market, and no railroad would build without the prospect of freight and passenger traffic. Hence with the Homestead Act of 1862 and the railroad land grants, the Federal government provided the necessary symbiotic ingredients to settle the west.
 

Unfortunately, the Union Pacific land grants had already pre-empted the best land along the Platte River, but, by special act of Congress, the Burlington was allowed to select public land beyond the twenty-mile limit. The bulk of this land was in the Republican River Valley. Eager to create traffic and dispose of these significant land grants, the Burlington decided to build south into the Republican River valley, and in 1878 created a branch line from Hastings to Red Cloud and the Republican Valley.
 
 

In a circular to its stockholders, the Burlington set forth the case for the railroad:

The large and very rapid increase of the population and business of that portion of Nebraska known as the Republican Valley [the said] has created a pressing demand for railroad facilities, and to supply it a company has been incorporated to build a road from Hastings on our road into the Valley. It is very important that this road should connect with ours, and that we should secure the large and growing business is will control, and it is also desirable for our interests that it should be built so as to be most advantageous to the large body of lands that we own in the Valley, in Webster and Franklin Counties, and which would at once be materially advanced in value by the building of such a road through them. To secure these objects, we have arranged for taking a perpetual lease of the new road to be known as the Republican Valley Railroad....⁵

 Notwithstanding their federal land grants, the railroads expected the local citizens to support new construction by purchasing the railroad's bonds.

On a spring day in 1878, A.E. Touzalin, Burlington and Missouri River Railroad general manager, rode into Red Cloud, Nebraska, in a horse-drawn buggy for a meeting with area residents. There he stated a railroad would be built from the B&MR's Plattsmouth Kearney mainline south to Red Cloud - if Webster County residents voted $47,500 in bonds, ten percent of the county's valuation, to the railroad for construction purposes.

People were responsive to Touzalin's idea, the room filled with enthusiasm as they visualized the opening of a new chapter in development of the area. The Republican Valley was producing good harvests of corn and wheat, but farmers had no easy way of moving their product to market. Travel was then over dusty trails via horseback and ox-drawn wagons.⁶

 The tracks reached Red Cloud on November 4, 1878. Very quickly the railroad built east along the river to link up with lines from Kansas City and St. Joseph, Missouri, and west to a terminus in Denver. After the Burlington reached Denver in 1882, Red Cloud, now a railroad division point, hoped to become what every western town hoped, the Junction City of the prairies.

This was not to be, for in 1884 the Burlington constructed the Kenesaw Cutoff through Holdrege to Oxford and McCook, and the main line by-passed Red Cloud. Notwithstanding this, the Republican Valley line remained a important route from St. Louis and Kansas City west to Denver with two through trains a day each way plus several local trains for another 70 years. ⁷

Willa Cather and the Burlington

 Cather was a skillful observer of people and how they lived. As a young girl, she, as countless other children, haunted the red railroad depot which was the center of the universe in so many western towns. What is fascinating about Cather is that she got the railroad details of her novels' settings right. This is not surprising since it was the railroad that linked her many worlds for her entire life. Cather used railroad settings in her works and this background is pure Burlington.
 
 
 

Burlington References

 The beginning of Cather's My Antonia is perhaps her best-remembered opening:

Last summer, in a season of intense heat, Jim Burden and I happened to be crossing Iowa on the same train. He and I are old friends, we grew up together in the same Nebraska town, and we had a great deal to say to each other. While the train flashed through the never-ending miles of ripe wheat, by country towns and bright-flowered pastures and oak groves wilting in the sun, we sat in the observation car, where the woodwork was hot to the touch and red dust lay deep over everything. The dust and the heat, the burning wind, reminded us of many things.⁸

Later, in 1905, she used that same scene in the story "A Sculptor's Funeral" in The Troll Garden, which was reprinted in Youth and the Bright Medusa:

    The night express shot, red as a rocket, from out the eastward marsh lands and wound along the river shore under the long lines of shivering poplars that sentinelled the meadows, the escaping steam hanging in grey masses against the pale sky and blotting out the Milky Way. In a moment the red glare of the headlight streamed up the snow-covered track before the siding and glittered on the wet, black rails. The burly man with the dishevelled red beard walked swiftly up the platform toward the approaching train, uncovering his head as he went. The group of men behind him hesitated, glanced questioningly at one another, and awkwardly followed his example. The train stopped, and the crowd shuffled up to the express car just as the door was thrown open, the man in the G.A.R. suit thrusting his head forward with curiosity. The express messenger appeared in the doorway, accompanied by a young man in a long ulster and travelling cap.

"Are Mr. Merrick's friends here?" inquired the young Man.¹⁰

 The "High Line Flyer" as this train is derisively called among railroad men, was jerking along through the hot afternoon over the monotonous country between Holdrege and Cheyenne. Besides the blond man and himself the only occupants of the car were two dusty, bedraggled looking girls who had been to the Exposition at Chicago, and who were earnestly discussing the cost of their first trip out of Colorado. The four uncomfortable passengers were covered with a sediment of fine, yellow dust which clung to their  hair and eyebrows like gold powder. It blew up in clouds from the bleak, lifeless country through which they passed, until they were one colour with the sage-brush and sand-hills. The grey and yellow desert was varied only by occasional ruins of deserted towns, and the little red boxes of station-houses, where the spindling trees and sickly vines in the blue-grass yards made little reen reserves fenced off in that confusing wilderness of sand.¹¹

But it is in Song of the Lark that Cather reveals how well she knew railroading. This is a complex book, and its first part describing a talented young girl growing up in the little Colorado town of "Moonstone," includes rich rail narrative.

Thea, the central character, obviously a young Willa Cather, is friends with Ray Kennedy, a railroad conductor. One passage begins with Ray cleaning his caboose so Thea and her mother can ride with him to Denver:

The one complaint Ray's brakemen had to make of him was that he was too fussy about his caboose. His former brakeman had asked to be transferred because, he said, 'Kennedy was as fussy about his car as an old maid about her bird-cage.' Joe Giddy, who was braking with Ray now, called him 'the bride,' because he kept the caboose and bunks so clean.

It was properly the brakeman's business to keep the car clean, but when Ray got back to the depot, Giddy was nowhere to be found. Muttering that all his brakemen seemed to consider him 'easy,' Ray went down to his car alone. He built a fire in the stove and put water on to heat while he got into his overalls and jumper. Then he set to work with a scrubbing-brush and plenty of soap and 'cleaner.' He scrubbed the floor and seats, blacked the stove, put clean sheets on the bunks, and then began to demolish Giddy's picture gallery. Ray found that his brakemen were likely to have what he termed 'a taste for the nude in art,' and Giddy was no exception. Ray took down half a dozen girls in tights and ballet skirts premiums for cigarette coupons - and some racy calendars advertising saloons and sporting clubs, which had cost Giddy both time and trouble; he even removed Giddy's particular pet, a naked girl lying on a couch with her knee carelessly poised in air.¹²

 Another scene in Song of the Lark makes it evident that she understood the danger of railroad life.

It is well for its peace of mind that the traveling public takes railroads so much for granted. The only men who are incurably nervous about railway travel are the railroad operatives. A railroad man never forgets that the next run may be his turn.
...

The wreck that 'caught' Ray was a very commonplace one; nothing thrilling about it, and it got only six lines in the Denver papers. It happened about daybreak one morning, only thirty-two miles from home.

A four o'clock in the morning Ray's train had stopped to take water at Saxony, having just rounded the long curve which lies south of that station. It was Joe Giddy's business to walk back along the curve about three hundred yards and put out torpedoes to warn any train which might be coming up from behind - a freight crew is not notified of trains following, and the brakeman is supposed to protect his train. Ray was so fussy about the punctilious observance of orders that almost any brakeman would take a chance once in a while, from natural perversity.

When the train stopped for water that morning, Ray was at the desk in his caboose, making out his report. Giddy took his torpedoes, swung off the rear platform, and glanced back at the curve. He decided that he would not go back to flag this time. If anything was coming up behind, he could hear it in plenty of time. So he ran forward to look at a hot journal that had been bothering him. In a general way, Giddy's reasoning was sound. If a freight train, or even a passenger train, had been coming up behind them, he could have heard it in time. But as it happened, a light engine, which made no noise at all, was coming - ordered out to help with the freight that was piling up at the other end of the division. This engine got no warning, came around the curve, and struck the caboose, went straight through it, and crashed into the heavy lumber car ahead.¹³

Other lively and accurate references to railroading in Cather's works appear in One of Ours, Lucy Gayheart, "Two Friends," and "The Affair at Grover Station."

Where did Cather learn about the Burlington and railroading? For anyone growing up in a small prairie town the railroad and its depot were gateways to the world. First on the trip west from Virginia and later as a student traveling to Lincoln, Cather traveled back and forth on the railroads. Later, as she moved east and became a world figure, she traveled extensively, coming yearly to Red Cloud until the death of her father.

A more personal connection was her brother Douglass who worked for several railroads before becoming a banker. Undoubtedly she was on her way to visit Douglass, who was working for the Burlington in Cheyenne, when she traveled across the High Line described in "A Death in the Desert." Later in 1912 she spent time with Douglass, then working on the Santa Fe Railway in the Southwest, and it was this visit that sparked her interest in southwestern archeology and history¹⁵.

A Lost Lady Revisited

 Cather not only used railroading to add realism to her novels, she was also very aware of the railroads' place in the world of those little prairie towns. Not only did she know railroad men, she recognized the role of the railroad titans in the lives of her characters. Later in A Lost Lady, Cather describes the critical turning point in the novel where Captain Forester, once a railroad contractor, receives bad news:

Early in June, when the Captain's roses were just coming on, his pleasant labors were interrupted. One morning an alarming telegram reached him. He cut it open with his garden shears, came into the house, and asked his wife to telephone for Judge Pommeroy. A savings bank, one in which he was largely interested, had failed in Denver. That evening the Captain and his lawyer went west on the express...¹⁶

Niel met his uncle and Captain Forrester when they alighted from the morning train, and drove over to the house with them. The business on which they had gone to Denver was not referred to until they were sifting with Mrs. Forrester in the front palour. The windows were open, and the perfume of the mock-orange and of June roses were blowing in from the garden. Captain Forrester introduced the subject, after slowly unfolding his handkerchief and wiping his forehead, and his fleshy neck, around his low collar.

"Maidy," he said, not looking at her, "I've come home a poor man. It took about everything there was to square up. You'll have this place, unencumbered, and my pension; that will be about all. The live-stock will bring in something."

Niel saw that Mrs. Forrester grew very pale, but she smiled and brought her husband his cigar stand. "Oh, well! I expect we can manage, can't we?

"We can just manage. Not much more. I'm afraid Judge Pommeroy considers I acted foolishly.

"Not at all, Mrs. Forrester," the Judge exclaimed. "He acted just as I hope I would have done in his place. But I am an unmarried man. There were certain securities, government bonds, which Captain Forrester could have turned over to you, but it would have been at the expense of the depositors."

"I've known men to do that," said the Captain heavily, "but I never considered they paid their wives a compliment. If Mrs. Forrester is satisfied, I shall never regret my decision." For the first time his tired, swollen eyes sought his wife's. ¹⁷

 The scene Cather describes was a familiar one after the crash of 1893. All over the America, and especially in agriculture areas, banks failed and many lost their life's savings.

 For the key figure of Captain Forrester who nobly sacrificed his own savings to save a bank Willa Cather drew on two important men in mid-western life. The more obvious candidate is Silas Garber for it is quite clear that Cather patterned Mrs. Forrester, the central figure of A Lost Lady after Garber's wife, Lyra.¹⁸ Silas Garber, one of Nebraska's pioneers founded Red Cloud before the coming of the railroad and was a leading businessman and banker. He also served as Governor of Nebraska from 1875 to 1879. The Farmers and Merchants Bank in Red Cloud, which Garber owned, failed in the panic of 1893 causing him to lose most of his money.

Cather's other model for Captain Forrester was Charles Elliott Perkins, President of the Burlington Railroad. Perkins' entire life had been devoted to the Burlington. A cousin of John Murray Forbes¹⁹, the Boston banker that controlled the railroad, the 18 year old Perkins came west in 1859 and was to serve the Burlington for over 40 years. He was President of the railroad from 1881 to 1901 when the Burlington was sold to the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern railways.²⁰He and the railroad were dominant forces in Nebraska, and Perkins County in southwestern Nebraska is named for him.

When railroads were the industrial giants of the day, to be a President of a major railroad such as the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy was both the pinnacle of success and responsibility to the community. Perkins took both roles seriously and is generally considered to be one of great railroad leaders of his time.

The 1st National Bank of Lincoln Crisis

 The economic collapse of 1893 swept though American political, economic and private life like a hurricane. It was the country's worst economic crisis until the 1930's depression. Exacerbated by the lack of government institutions and policy to alleviate its impact, everyone was hurt: workers, farmers, railroads and banks.

 Lincoln, Nebraska, was and is the hub of Burlington operations in Nebraska. Here the Chicago - Denver mainline crosses the Kansas City - Montana lines and branch lines fan out to serve the farming communities of Nebraska. At nearby Havelock, the Burlington created a large shop complex to build and maintain locomotives and rail cars which provided employment to hundreds of men.²¹

Perkins, whose headquarters and home was in Burlington, Iowa, purchased, as did many, a small portion of stock in the 1st National Bank, Lincoln's largest bank, but had no role in its management. The bank had many Burlington employee depositors and the railroad also maintained accounts with the bank.

In 1896, three years after the crash of 1893, the bank was close to failure. Unbeknownst to Perkins, the Burlington's Assistant Treasurer at Omaha, J. G. Taylor, met with the bank President, N.S. Harwood, in an effort to forestall the failure of the bank. Harwood asked the railroad to save the bank. The upshot was that Perkins was made a bank director. But only after it was announced in the local newspapers was Perkins informed! The reason of course was to save the bank, for if it failed it would have lead to widespread bank failures in the South Platte region, which, in turn, would have lead to the bankruptcies of many businesses. Dozens of railroads had already gone to the wall including Nebraska's other big railroad, the Union Pacific, as well as the Santa Fe and other mid-western railroads.

 When notified of his election, Perkins declined. Only when Taylor explained the true situation did Perkins agree to serve. Little did Perkins realize what it would cost him. Compounded by the continuing severe economic crisis and the fact that the bank's president, Harwood, was less than honest, Perkins was called on again and again to purchase additional bank stock and invest additional funds. The board of directors of the Burlington refused to become involved leaving Perkins personally to take up the burden. Finally, in 1897 it was revealed that the former State Treasurer and Harwood were accused of irregularities.

 Perkins, feeling he had no choice, continued to pour money into the 1st National Bank to keep it solvent until Perkins sold the bank in 1899 when the panic subsided. He later calculated that his total investment was over $1,391,000 and his loss was $682,000 in 1896-1900 dollars. Today that loss would approach
$25,000,000.²²

A brief history of the bank published in 1951 states:

The bank and its territory was rescued from this disaster by the personal integrity and financial ability of Charles E. Perkins, then President of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad. When Perkins, a director of the bank, though a minor stockholder, learned of the difficulty he felt a keen personal responsibility. He told Charles H. Morrill: "I am a director of the bank. I do not know how many people may have deposited on that account but I presume many have done so. I have made up my mind to assume this task alone if none of the stockholders will join me." Mr. Perkins did just that.²³

 Willa Cather certainly knew her way around the newsroom of Lincoln newspapers. Until she graduated from the University of Nebraska in June 1895 she worked for the Lincoln Journal as a reporter and columnist. News about bank failures and economic distress were featured on the front page of nearly every edition. However, while the health of the 1st  National Bank may have been called into question, it did not fail and Perkins heroic actions to prop up the bank were done behind the scenes.

Whether she knew anything about the matter at the time is unclear. Cather certainly had met both Perkins and his wife, Edith fot the Perkins and Garbers were well acquianted and visited each other in Red Cloud and Colorado Springs. In addition, she was awareof this friendship and used Edith Perkins and her daughter Alice as prototypes for the Ogden family in A Lost Lady.²⁴

Perkins died in 1907. In 1902, Charles G. Dawes who had served as Comptroller of the U.S. Treasury wrote of the actions of an anonymous railroad official in saving a bank²⁵. Clearly the model for Dawes' story was Perkins. We also know that Cather had visited Perkin's daughter in Boston.

In any case, Cather wove the story of Perkins into A Lost Lady.
 
 
 

Going Home

 The 1923 Knopf edition of April Twilights ends with a poem that was Cather's ode to the Burlington:

How smoothly the trains run beyond the Missouri;
Even in my sleep I know when I have crossed the river.
The wheels turn as if they were glad to go;...
As if they, too, were going home.²⁶

Conclusion

 Today, the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy lives on as the mighty Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad, one of four giant railroads left of the hundreds that built and settled America.

 But in Red Cloud the tracks are all but gone. Where once the Night Express paused for coal and water, and passengers boarded for the journey to Denver, the tracks are out of service. The citizens of Red Cloud and the Willa Cather Foundation have preserved the depot, and the local grain elevator operator still ships out cars of grain, but the tracks west of Red Cloud lie unused and the world that Cather captured is gone.

	PACIFIC EXPRESS	COLORADO EXPRESS		ATLANTIC EXPRESS	KANSAS CITY EXPRESS
	Read Down	Read Down		Read Up	Read Up
Chicago	1000	1245		215	655
Omaha	730	840		655	1005
Lincoln	1050	1255		350	725
Hastings	515	449		1155	1050
Red Cloud	725	655		1000	735
McCook	1055	1035		615	410
Denver	725	730		925	730

 Note: It took almost two days to travel from Chicago to Denver in 1884. Today, Amtrak does it in 15 hours. After the opening of the Kenesaw Cutoff, the Burlington ran a local Hastings - Red Cloud train with connections to Lincoln and east. It would leave Red Cloud in the morning and return in the evening, allowing the citizens of Red Cloud to shop and do business in Hastings.
 
 

Cather, Willa. April Twilights. Boston: The Gorham Press, 1903.

--- April Twilights. Boston: New York: Knopf, 1923. Revised Edition.

---"A Death in the Desert."  The Troll Garden. New York: McClure, Phillips,1905.

---0 Pioneers! Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1913.

---Song of the Lark. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1915.

---My Antonia.Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918.

--- Youth and the Bright Medusa. New York: Knopf, 1920.

---"A Sculptor's Funeral."  Youth and the Bright Medusa. New York: Knopf, 1920.

---One of Ours. New York: Knopf, 1922.

---A Lost Lady. New York: Knopf, 1923. See also the Scholarly Edition. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1997.

---Death Comes for the Archbishop. New York: Knopf, 1926.

---Shadows on the Rock. New York: Knopf, 1931.

---"Two Friends." Obscure Destinies. New York: Knopf, 1932.

---Sapphira and the Slave Girl. New York: Knopf, 1940.

---"The Affair at Grover Station." College paper with Dorothy Canfield Fisher, 1893.

Other Cited Works About Cather

Bennett, Mildred R. TheWorld of Willa Cather. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1951.

---"What Happened to the Rest of the Cather Family."Nebraska History Vol. 54, Number 4, (1973): 585-624.

Brown, E.K.,Willa Cather: a Critical Biography. New York: Knopf, 1953.

Woodress, James.Willa Cather: a Literary Life. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987.

Other Works

Chandler, Alfred D., Jr. TheVisible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977.

Dunbier, Lonnie Pierson. Unfinished dissertation, Department of English, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Hadcock, Carryl E. and Alfred J. Houck. Burlington Route Depot Life. David City, NE: South Platte Press, 1996.

Holck, Alfred J.J.The Hub of the Burlington Lines West: Lincoln and the Lincoln Division of the Burlington Route. David City, NE: South Platte Press, 1991.

 Kistler, Richard C.,The High Plains Route. 3rd ed. David City, NE: South Platte Press, 1987.

---The Wymore story. 3rd ed. David City, NE: South Platte Press, 1987.

Larson, John Lauritz,The Bonds of Enterprise: John Murray Forbes and Western Development in America's Railway Age. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984.

McKee, James L., Edward F. Zimmer and Lori K. Jorgensen.Havelock: a Photo History and Walking Tour. Lincoln, NE: J & L Lee, 1993.

Overton, Richard C. Burlington West: a Colonization History of the Burlington Railroad. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1941.

---Burlington Route: a History of the Burlington Lines.New York: Knopf, 1965.

Tanner, Thomas W. "The Conscience of a Capitalist: C. E. Perkins and Responsibility." Occasional paper, 1965. Chicago: The Newberry Library.