Over the Range
Over the Range
Over the Range
Richard V. Francaviglia
6 1/8 x 9 1/4, 336 pages, illustrated with color maps and photos

Published: 2008

ISBN 978-0-87421-705-6
cloth $34.95

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Richard Francaviglia is professor of history and geography and director of the Center for Southwestern Studies and Cartography at the University of Texas Arlington. His books include Mapping and Imagination in the Great Basin: A Cartographic History.

Over the Range

A History of the Promontory Summit Route of the Pacific Railroad

Richard V. Francaviglia

Also by Franaviglia - Go East, Young Man

Francaviglia has taken a fresh approach to a familiar subject in this important study of a site that forms one of the true building blocks of American history.
—Carlos Schwantes

Francaviglia looks anew at the geographical-historical context of the driving of the golden spike in May 1869. He gazes outward from the site of the transcontinental railroad's completion—the summit of a remote mountain range that extends south into the Great Salt Lake. The transportation corridor that for the first time linked America's coasts gave this distinctive region significance, but it anchored two centuries of human activity linked to the area's landscape.

Francaviglia brings to that larger story a geographer's perspective on place and society, a railroad enthusiast's knowledge of trains, a cartographic historian's understanding of the knowledge and experience embedded in maps, and a desert lover's appreciation of the striking basin-and-range landscape that borders the Great Salt Lake.

Preview the Introduction in PDF.