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Hun­ington Library opens Visions of Empire. The Quest for a Railroad Across America, 1840–1880

The Hun­ington Library presents Visions of Empire. The Quest for a Railroad Across America, 1840–1880 on view April 21 through July 23 in the MaryLou and George Boone Gallery.


Currier & Ives, “The Express Train,” hand colored lithograph, 1870. From the private collection of James Brust.

Drawing on the unparalleled manuscripts collection on the topic held by The Hun­ington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, a major exhibition will illuminate the remarkable changes wrought in the United States by the planning, construction, and completion of the transcontinental railroad. “Visions of Empire: The Quest for a Railroad Across America, 1840–1880,” coincides with the 150th anniversary of the 1862 Pacific Railroad Act, which led to the rail connection between the Missouri River and the Pacific Ocean. The exhibition features some 200 items, the vast majority from The Huntington—including maps, photographs, illustrations, newspapers, magazines, letters, and diaries, most of which have never before been on public display.

“‘Visions of Empire’ is our first large-scale effort to share with the public The Huntington’s trove of materials relating to the history of the American railroad,” said David Zeidberg, Avery Director of the Library. “With his purchase of a few major collections early in the 20th century, Henry Huntington brought together hundreds upon hundreds of the most significant books and pamphlets on the trans-Mississippi West. Those materials, combined with the scores of invaluable manuscript, photographic, and ephemera collections on the West acquired over the succeeding decades, form a massive foundation for what we hope will be an extraordinary exhibition.”

Peter Blodgett, H. Russell Smith Foundation Curator of Western Historical Manuscripts at The Huntington and curator of the exhibition, has chosen to tell a couple of stories. “As much as the exhibition will cover the technological marvels, engineering feats, and entrepreneurial audacity of the railroad age, it also tells the story of how the vision of American continental expansion evolved through a range of historical contexts—from the age of Andrew Jackson through the Gold Rush, Civil War, and Gilded Age of the late 19th century,” says Blodgett.

Beginning with the handful of passionate and obstinate dreamers before the Civil War who first imagined a railroad stretching to the Pacific Ocean, “Visions of Empire” portrays the drive to move westward in the face of unrelenting geographic obstacles. Published engravings and original drawings from the 1830s and ’40s depict romanticized landscapes navigable only by foot or on horseback, by wagon or by boat. One such example is the exquisite hand-illustrated diary of British army officer William Fairholme, which captures the landscape of the southern Great Plains in the 1840s; others include several of the hundreds of drawings by gold seeker J. Goldsborough Bruff as he takes part in the harrowing overland migration to Gold Rush California. Karl Bodmer’s hand-colored engravings of steamboats on western rivers from Maximilian of Wied’s Travels in the Interior of North America (ca. 1834) not only represent “one of the first great visual epics of Western American history,” according to Blodgett, but they portray the early appearance of the new technology of steam power beyond the Mississippi, a generation before the arrival of the train.

Such images, reflecting the increasing movement of people and goods west in the 1840s, helped to fuel widespread popular debate about railroad expansion across western plains and mountains to the Pacific Coast. In 1845, New York merchant Asa Whitney submitted a petition to the U. S. Congress proposing the construction of a railroad from Lake Michigan to the Pacific Ocean, igniting a debate that would unfold over the ensuing decades.

The exhibition features letters, newspaper articles, railroad convention proceedings, and speeches in Congress that depict the points of view in play. These many perspectives echo the multitude of hopes and dreams that different individuals held for their futures, from profit-hungry railroad entrepreneurs and financiers pursuing federal largesse to Chinese and Irish laborers attracted by the promise of work involved in laying nearly 1,700 miles of track.

“Throughout the exhibition,” says Blodgett, “visitors will encounter the voices of many Americans celebrating, critiquing, commending, and condemning the new world being stitched together in those decades with iron rails.”

The Huntington is located at 1151 Oxford Rd., San Marino, Calif., 12 miles from downtown Los Angeles. It is open to the public Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday from noon to 4:30 p.m.; and Saturday, Sunday, and Monday holidays from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Summer hours (Memorial Day through Labor Day) are 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Closed Tuesdays and major holidays. Admission on weekdays: $15 adults, $12 seniors (65+), $10 students (ages 12–18 or with fulltime student I.D.), $6 youth (ages 5–11), free for children under 5. Group rate $11 per person for groups of 15 or more. Members are admitted free. Admission on weekends and Monday holidays: $20 adults, $15 seniors, $10 students, $6 youth, free for children under 5. Group rate $14 per person for groups of 15 or more. Members are admitted free. Admission is free to all visitors on the first Thursday of each month with advance tickets. Information: 6264052100 or huntington.org

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