Dedicated April 23, a new exhibit running through October 29 at the Union Pacific Railroad Museum in Council Bluffs, Iowa, features America’s national parks.

Abraham Lincoln saw in the name renewal—the Union Pacific. Chartered by Congress in 1862, it was a railroad forged out of the depths of civil war. Lincoln then fervently hoped to heal the Union by stretching its tracks across the West. Finally, with Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, the great undertaking could begin. By then, Lincoln had been assassinated, but the Union would indeed endure.

What no one could predict in 1865 was the coming partnership between America’s railroads and the national parks. A year earlier, on June 30, 1864, Lincoln affixed his signature to the Yosemite Park Act, transferring the public lands encompassing the Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove of Big Trees to California. The irrevocable stipulation was that the state would hold them “inalienable for all time.” But again, with another 50,000 dead on the battlefields of Virginia, there is no evidence Lincoln gave the bill a second thought.

Restoring the nation’s unity called for building something great. Revisionist historians contend the continent should have remained a mystery, and the railroads perhaps never built. After all, they only hastened the demise of native cultures while splitting the bison herds apart.

Even in hindsight, it sounds farfetched. After the California Gold Rush and settlement of Oregon, the future was never in doubt. Since 1850 and 1859, respectively, California and Oregon had been states. Beginning in 1865, how Americans filled in the blanks may not have always been their finest hour, but Lincoln knew he had a country to rebuild—and save.

It is rather our obligation to appreciate the times. Granted, Union Pacific and its successors speeded the conquest of the West. But they also opened it to a unique opportunity, themselves insisting, based on the Yosemite model, that the nation establish more public parks.

Beginning in the mid-1930s, and especially after World War II, Union Pacific joined every Western railroad in modernizing its passenger fleet, here the 1955 domeliner City of Los Angeles, shown with its crew in a photograph for a contemporary magazine ad. The photograph is now a wall display at the Union Pacific Railroad Museum. Originating in Chicago, the City of Los Angeles provided options for accessing five national parks—Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Zion, Bryce Canyon, and Grand Canyon. Today, were the train still operational, the final leg of its route southwest of Las Vegas would further bisect California's Mojave National Preserve/Christine Runte

Today, no American company knows the narrative better, up to and including the word inalienable. Although Union Pacific’s holdings today are vast, they have not come at the expense of forgetting history. Even were someone now to suggest it, the name Union Pacific would still stand guard.

Following expansion, other railroads have reverted to acronyms like BNSF and CSX. Say what, the public asks? Or couldn’t care less, is the point. As for Amtrak, isn’t that a military vehicle?

In contrast, and dating back to 1920, the Union Pacific maintains its own historical archives and museum at Council Bluffs, Iowa. Company headquarters are next door in Omaha, Nebraska. While a private nonprofit runs the museum, the collection remains the property—and pride—of the railroad.

Originally the Carnegie library for Council Bluffs, the 14,000-square foot museum features 150 years of Union Pacific history, including construction, freight operations, passenger traffic, employee relations—and this year, in honor of the National Park Service Centennial, a special exhibit on the national parks.

However, every exhibit is unique. Want to help build the railroad? You can, thanks to a computer simulation. After choosing a character and “suiting up” in the crew car you are shown how to lay ties and rails.

Or you can join the Central Pacific Railroad building east from California to meet the Union Pacific. In that exhibit you blast through the Sierra. Flash! Boom! Naturally, kids find it loads of fun.

The point made—and it is well made—is that building the railroad was a great national accomplishment. No doubt, the native way of life disappeared, and with it George Catlin’s 1832 vision of “a nation’s Park, containing man and beast, in all the wild and freshness of their nature’s beauty!”

An artist and a romantic, Catlin would have kept the plains intact. His dream of a great Indian reservation simply could not compete with national growth or the Civil War.

The point remains that 40 years after Catlin there would be a Yellowstone National Park. Among the five major railroads that eventually served it, Union Pacific, then the second railroad, arrived at West Yellowstone in 1908.

In a final, illustrated map, we meet the legion of dignitaries, workers, journalists, and visitors gathered to watch the ceremonial driving of the golden spike. The date is May 10, 1869. The place is Promontory Summit, Utah Territory. Although I thought I had seen every original photograph of the ceremony, the museum has many more. Physically commemorated by the National Park Service at Golden Spike National Historic Site, the day is one of the greatest in American history.

Back at the museum in Council Bluffs, the national park exhibit is also wondrously fresh, further including previously unpublished images of Zion, Bryce Canyon, and the North Rim of Grand Canyon. Nor was I aware of the size of the railroad’s film collection, both feature-length documentaries and travel shorts.

Among the four titles digitized for the exhibit is a mesmerizing color film of Yellowstone. In my favorite scene, the Yellowstone Special glides into West Yellowstone station. The steam engine suggests pre-1950. As passengers disembark, they are directed to the great Union Pacific Dining Lodge designed in 1925 by Gilbert Stanley Underwood. Indicative of the passenger loads on the Yellowstone Special, the lodge provided seating for 350 guests. In peak season, when the train often ran in multiple sections, hundreds more would be served.

Museums across the country are learning to be hands-on, but where else can children spike rails to a tie without the fear of hitting their foot? Less emphasized, but also worth teaching, is the land area needed to build a railroad in contrast to a superhighway (one-tenth), as well as the fuel savings (sevenfold) of trains as opposed to trucks/Union Pacific Railroad Museum

After breakfast, a fleet of 17-passenger, open air motorbuses spirits everyone into the park. Along the way, the buses are met by interpretive rangers beside popular hot springs, geysers, and pools. Finally, it is time for check-in at Old Faithful Inn, while others are taken to the Lodge or cabins.

So this is how the railroads did it—bringing in thousands, but without the impact. The way to see the parks, Union Pacific agreed, was by rail to a gateway community. The shuttle then awaiting your arrival needed only narrow roads.

At quick stops, passengers could be seen standing and taking pictures. Otherwise, each bench seat had a separate door. Loading and unloading were effortless. College kids carried the luggage. Why would anyone want to drive?

America’s answer of course was “progress.” “See the USA in your Chevrolet.” Unfortunately, the driver didn’t get to see much of the country, and now the national parks succumbed to development. “Industrial Tourism,” Edward Abbey called it, watching the parking lots and roads expand.

The shoe dropped exactly a century after Mr. Lincoln’s railroad. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. However, beginning one sad day in the 1960s you could no longer take a train to Yellowstone.

Ideally, the exhibit itself will get to travel. Meanwhile, the museum has always covered the national parks in its permanent exhibits, which further include a wonderful tribute to the African-American porters, cooks, and waiters who staffed Union Pacific’s passenger trains.

Of course, when the trains died, those jobs died. That portion of the black middle class serving the railroads (and the portion was large) lost far more than we realize.

Indeed, along with preserving the American landscape, advancing diversity took a tremendous hit. One panel is especially evocative. Lined up beside the City of Los Angeles we see its entire crew. A representative family is boarding the train. The question is inescapable. What happened to that beautiful train?

To cruise now is to hopscotch the ocean. Oh, look! Another island paradise! Whose turn is it to buy a trinket?

Once paradise meant America the Beautiful. We claim now to want it “greener.” If so, why have we virtually abandoned the passenger train, which in its heyday offered both stewardship and the national parks, all the while breaking down racial stereotypes and divides?

At the museum, it is interpreted largely between the lines, but there is no doubt what happened to the City of Los Angeles—and hundreds more like it across the country. Their demise was not especially what the railroads wanted. It was rather what the country said it wanted, having voted with its feet.

Certainly a constant barrage of advertising told Americans they wanted the car. “Only by highway!” I recall one ad from the 1950s. The Boeing 707 also did its part.

Of necessity, the railroads may have hastened the transition from passengers to freight, but again, think of all the subsidies the government showered on highways and airports.

The railroads had no Highway “Trust” Fund—and still paid millions in property taxes for every inch of right-of-way. The land grants were never intended to be inexhaustible. Nor did the majority of railroads even get one, still to find themselves outpaced by highways constructed entirely with taxpayer dollars.

No doubt, the jet airplane then gave us speed. However, what have we done with the time we “saved?” What happened to the country that once believed “getting there is half the fun?”

At the museum, the loss is on display for those admitting it. It is also close by in Omaha at the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail. Every American would do well to remember why we envy Lewis and Clark. They got to see the West when it was young.

Once, in 1972, I had the privilege of riding in the Traveler’s Rest lounge car of the Northern Pacific Railway. Vignette paintings and a wall-to-ceiling map of the Lewis and Clark Expedition told the entire story for passengers. Amtrak then gutted the car for a fast-food interior having nothing to do with history.

“A bold new concept in rail travel,” Amtrak called it. After painting the car’s exterior red, white, and blue, the new interior was done in purple and orange. Lewis and Clark? Why keep them around when you can be another Dairy Queen?

At least the railroads had known what they were selling—beauty. Has the highway ever given us beauty? Blue highways, perhaps, but not the majority.

By now, we are so used to calling billboards “information” we rarely see them for what they are. “Litter on a stick,” environmentalists remind us, but they, too, have forgotten the railroad.

Because the car is newer, everything it does must be better. Again, forget how many have died for that betterment—still close to 40,000 people every year.

This is to explain why the history of the American railroad refuses to relax its grip. We know there is something in a railroad’s soul, if only we dare see again past roadside America.

It is indeed refreshing to visit a community that proudly interprets its railroad soul. Maybe Amtrak was a mistake? Omaha and Council Bluffs are not saying that, but for once let’s get it out. We cannot remain dependent on highways forever.

Even today, only ten percent of American travel is by air. That leaves 90 percent open to the possibility that we could finally get back to soul.

The soul, that is, of land and beauty. Looking closely, Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail is saying it, too. The national parks sprang from our love of exploration. The timeless wonder of America is our ability to keep exploring. Lose that and we lose our future.

Granted, we have known for decades what the country looks like. It is all on a satellite image now. But do we know how to keep it fresh and exciting? That is what it means to have national parks.

And railroads. Union Pacific indeed offers us a final story worthy of the year. In 1906, John Muir’s hopes for restoring Yosemite Valley to the country had stalled in the House of Representatives. Senate leaders were also opposed.

In desperation, Muir called upon Edward H. Harriman. By then, Harriman controlled not only the Union Pacific but also the Southern Pacific and Illinois Central lines. The men had met in 1899 on Harriman’s fabled expedition to Alaska. Harriman had invited Muir, after which both had become fast friends.

Might the industrialist now convince the Speaker of the House to release the bill and allow Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove to become part of the national park established in 1890? Harriman would certainly try.

The actual conversation is lost to history, but it probably went something like this. Mr. Speaker, when John Muir asks, know that I am also asking. My dear friend Muir would never steer the country wrong.

John Muir the friend of a railroad tycoon? It is only we who are surprised. But yes, it was Harriman that convinced Speaker Joe Cannon and the U.S. Senate to pass Muir’s bill.

Imagine if Harriman had lived (he died in 1909). Right behind was the Hetch Hetchy fight. With Harriman’s help, might Muir and the Sierra Club have saved the valley? We certainly know Muir would have asked, and that Congress would have listened.

As it stands, preservation groups, along with their railroad allies, learned to save much of the West, and between 1911 and 1916 joined forces to win the establishment of the National Park Service.

Fortunately, we can still say Union Pacific and thank a living railroad. All that remains is to remind ourselves why the nation is incomplete. Then yes, as the exhibit says, America will be set. Set for the future, not just the parks, having finally agreed on those things our country should never abandon.

Surely, pursuing every chance for renewal and wanting seriously to be green, we would throw our support behind our railroads, the better to realize, as enshrined in the name Union Pacific, Abraham Lincoln’s hopeful vision for a better us.

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A frequent contributor to the Traveler, Alfred Runte spoke the weekend of April 23 at the dedication of “All Set for the West,” including a public lecture at Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail. 

Planned in close cooperation with Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, "All Set for the West" was itself inspired by the National Park Service Centennial. Although no one is likely to get lost, the trail register certainly encourages visitors to think of the national parks as a living history. In registering to appreciate their past, we need equally to sign on to their future/Union Pacific Railroad Museum