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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.
- Sales Rank: #833016 in Books
- Published on: 2005-05-16
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 1.83" h x 6.38" w x 9.32" l, 2.36 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 637 pages
- revision history of the Southern Pacific Railroad
From Publishers Weekly
Tracing the story of the Southern Pacific from the founding of its earliest predecessor roads in Texas and California to the Southern's final amalgamation in the 1920s, Orsi artfully weaves corporate history with social history to show the impact of the steel horse on frontier settlement, the development of cities and the environment. Orsi, professor emeritus of history at Cal State, is a defender of the Southern, using the railroad as a case study for eschewing the myth of the monopolistic, land-grabbing railroads. Where some previous historians have denounced the Southern as an evil "Octopus" intent on using its dominance in freight tariffs, land grants and political clout to deprive farmers and workers of their profits, Orsi instead reveals a benevolent capitalist monolith focused on enriching itself by fostering development and creating a flood tide of commerce that would raise all boats. As Orsi points out, the management of the Southern identified quite closely with broad regional interests, because the Southern was the one major U.S. railroad organized and operated by westerners rather than Wall Streeters. Orsi provides a remarkable study for those intrigued by the history of American railroading and the development of the West—and of American capitalism. 58 b&w photos, 4 maps. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
“Sunset Limited will undoubtedly assume a prominent and enduring place among the essential histories of . . . the American West.” (American Studies Journal 2010-07-14)
From the Inside Flap
"An extraordinary book by a master historian! Orsi demonstrates that the Southern Pacific was not simply a predatory corporation obsessed with maximizing its profits and political power; it had a strong sense of the public good and a devotion to building stable, prosperous communities. This superb book should be required reading for all historians of the West, business, and the environment."—Donald J. Pisani, author of Water and American Government
“This deep and extensive examination of the Southern Pacific's development activities in California will encourage readers to look beyond the overblown rhetoric of the railroad's many political enemies and see afresh its many positive economic accomplishments as it worked to build the Twentieth-Century West. Orsi’s presentation is as luminous as it is impressive”—Carlos Schwantes, author of Going Places: Transportation Redefines the Twentieth Century West
“This brilliantly researched and beautifully written study of one of America's greatest railroads offers wonderful insights into both transportation and Western history. Orsi places the early history of the Southern Pacific Railroad in proper focus by skillfully untangling the long-standing Octopus myth. This work deserves to be called a landmark in the field.”—H. Roger Grant, author of Follow the Flag: A History of the Wabash Railroad Company
"Sunset Limited illuminates not only the workings and ambitions of the Southern Pacific railroad but teaches us a great deal about the late nineteenth and early twentieth century American West as well. This is a wonderful scholarly study: remarkably thorough, ambitious, and gracefully rendered."—William Deverell, author of Railroad Crossing: Californians and the Railroad, 1850-1910
Most helpful customer reviews
29 of 33 people found the following review helpful.
All Hail the S & P!
By S. Pactor
This actually could have been a three star review, but I have to give credit to the thuroughness of the scholarship, the excellent photographs and the superb 200+ end notes, which are a mini-book in themselves.
Orsi's book is "revisionist" if it is proper to call a thesis that glorifies a massive American corporation "revisionist". I suppose that it qualifies if one is taking the scholarship of major American and French universities from the sixties onward as the standard.
Simply put, Orsi's goal is to set the record straight about the Southern Pacific. No "Octopus" in his eyes, the Southern Pacific was an important innovator in the area of agriculture, conservation and scientific forestry. Indeed, without the Southern Pacific, California and the west as we know it would not have been possible.
Aside from rewriting bits of history from the railroad's perspective, Orsi's main scholarly contribution is his access to the Southern Pacific's own corporate records. Certainly this is an approach that gives a more complicated picture of the corporations motives and morals then the simplistic "Octopus" portrait of Frank Norris.
Orsi also has access to better statistics then scholars operating in the past had (i.e. the railroad's internal statistics), so that allows him to fairly castigate those who have painted an unrealistic portrait of, say, the size of the Southern Pacific's land grants.
Although I am sympathetic to his attempt to rehabilitate the image of the Southern Pacific, I found some of the assertions regarding the tremendous difficulties the S & P had in carrying out its good intentions hard to take. If one was to rely on Orsi's book as one's only source, you might believe that the Southern Pacific was a money losing venture, operated out of sheer philanthropy of the "Big Four".
I'm serious about that comment: There is no mention about the tremendous personal fortunes of Stanford, Huntington and Co., let alone any discussion of the profit of the railroad as a whole. On the other hand, Orsi goes out of his way to demonstrate expenditures the railroad made in support of the common good.
Of course, I can hear the authorial response: Everyone already knows about the money that was made, I'm trying to fill in the stuff that everyone doesn't know.
Still, one example: The S & P operated the Pacific Land Company, which operated at the behest of the Big Four by subdividing land for sale. Orsi says that there wasn't any record of how much money that Land Company made and says it's impossible to even determine how the land and profit was accounted for within the S & P. Is that so? I find it curious, as I found the curious the almost complete lack of (positive) financial data.
On the whole, I thought Orsi does a great job. However, I would have liked more balance, even if he is writing this book to even the score.
8 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
Orsi Gets it Right
By Peter T. Wolf
As an historian said about this book; "It should be required reading for those interested in the West, the environment and business". Indeed it should. Because more than just blowing away all the dis-information that the Southern Pacific suffered from for decades (and contributed to its collapse), this book provides excellent case studies of how industry, government, NGO's, and the Press cooperated on solving complex and politically charged problems. In fact it was amazing to me to see how well and patiently these disparate groups worked with each other. Much more so than today. There is a lesson here.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
Fascinating look at the Southern Pacific's non-railroad activities
By Robert Ray
This is a wonderful railroad history, that actually has little to do with the railroad. As (eventually) a large landowner from land grants, and greatly dependent on the success of its farmer customers, the railroad was forced to take an active interest in the stewardship of the West's resources, at a time when government was either unwilling or unable to do much. Massively researched, evidently over a long period of years (there are 177 pages of notes), Orsi shows how the railroad did a lot to develop the West without destroying its resources. Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks, and Lake Tahoe, owe much of their current beauty and protected status to the efforts of the railroad and its managers. A lawsuit pushed by the SP ended hydraulic mining (which was burying farmland below under barren gravel). It sold its land to farmers on very easy terms (better than the government's terms), with the its land divided up to form viable farms. The railroad did much to establish and organize water supplies in its (mostly) arid territory, it organized stock trails so stockmen could get their herds to market, and it helped establish the first forest fire fighting services. Orsi also takes a long look at the Mussel Slough Affair, showing that it was an organized attempt by squatters to steal land. The judge who ordered the evictions of these thieves was incidentally the same one who ended hydraulic mining in California, and the SP's local land agent later lobbied in Washington to get the first Yosemite and Seqouia Parks bill passed. So many charter members of John Muir's Sierra Club were railroad officials that some feared the organization was contaminated.
Well written, the book is a tremendously interesting look at how the railroad established the West, for its own benefit of course but also in awareness of the responsibility to maintain the West's resources. Highly recommended.
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