Trouble In Santa Fe

"This volume provides a series of essays on open questions in ecology with the overarching goal being to outline to the most important, most interesting or most fundamental problems in ecology that need to be addressed. The contributions span ecological subfields, from behavioral ecology and population ecology to disease ecology and conservation and range in tone from the technical to more personal meditations on the state of the field. Many of the chapters start or end in moments of genuine curiosity, like one which takes up the question of why the world is green or another which asks what might come of a thought experiment in which we "turn-off" evolution entirely"--

Cyrus K. Holliday envisioned a railroad that would run from Kansas to the Pacific, increasing the commerce and prosperity of the nation. With farsighted investors and shrewd management, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway grew from Holliday’s idea into a model of the modern, rapid, and efficient railroad. There were many growing pains early on, including rustlers, thieves, and desperadoes as well as the nineteenth century’s economic and climatic hardships. The railroad eventually extended from Chicago to San Francisco, with substantial holdings in oil fields, timber land, uranium mines, pipelines, and real estate. This is the first comprehensive history of the iconic Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, from its birth in 1859 to its termination in 1996. This volume discusses the construction and operation of the railway, the strategies of its leaders, the evolution of its locomotive fleet, and its famed passenger service with partner Fred Harvey. The vast changes within the nation’s railway system led to a merger with the Burlington Northern and the creation of the BNSF Railway. An iconic railroad, the Santa Fe at its peak operated thirteen thousand miles of routes and served the southwestern region of the nation with the corporate slogan “Santa Fe All the Way.” This new edition covers almost twenty-five more years of history, including the merger of the Santa Fe and Burlington Northern railroads and new material on labor, minorities, and women on the carrier along with new and updated maps and photographs.

The Santa Fe Trail was one of the two great overland highways originating in Missouri in the nineteenth century. Several decades before settlers streamed over the Oregon Trail, traders were heading southwest. The caravans carried the wares of Yankee commerce; they returned loaded with buffalo robes and beaver pelts and the rich metals of Mexican mines. The thousand-mile journey “was a perilous cruise across a boundless sea of grass, over forbidding mountains, among wild beasts and wilder men, ending in an exotic city offering quick riches, friendly foreign women, and a moral holiday,” writes Stanley Vestal. Vestal begins where the trail does. He describes outfitting for the trip, the society formed for survival, the hunt for meat, landmarks, and the dangers. He evokes the history and legends surrounding the trail at every point, including figures like Kit Carson, Jedediah Smith, the Bent brothers, and Uncle Dick Wooton.

It seemed that Banister blood was destined to wander, starting with the earliest of settlers in the original colonies. This desire to see what was beyond the mountains or the sea flowed like a curse through their veins, pushing them on… In the third installment of the popular Banister Ranch Series, we discover what it was like to travel into unknown regions of the western frontier as an early settler. Spending months riding in a hot, crowded, bone-jarring covered wagon was only part of the challenge. A shaky treaty with some of the Indian tribes opened the Santa Fe trail for travelers, but nothing guaranteed their safety or insured their success as they struggled not only to survive, but to build a ranch during a violent and dangerous time in American history. Banister—Raiders of Santa Fe blends American history with the saga of a fictional family, the Banisters, revealing what it was like to face multiple, seemingly unsurmountable challenges and surviving against all odds on the frontier. The series offers relevant, realistic historical fiction with real places and events woven into exciting storylines that will resonate with the modern reader.

The lively history of this great trade artery is once more available.

The Santa Fe Trail’s role as the major western trade route in the early to mid-nineteenth century made it a critical part of America’s Westward expansion and the stories of its heyday include some of the greatest adventures in the history of the Old West. Drawn from first-hand accounts of early entrepreneurs and emigrants who braved the Santa Fe Trail between 1820 and 1880, this history reveals the lure of the West and puts its importance to American history in context. On the Santa Fe Trail paints a portrait of the land before the wagon tracks were carved in its surface and recounts the hardships, dangers, and adventures faced by the hardy souls who went West to make their fortunes.