View on the Platte Valley Plains, near Columbus, Nebraska, as seen from the Union Pacific Railroad

From Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper of September 15, 1877, the engraving is part of a series "Frank Leslie's Excursion to the Pacific." Like Harper's Weekly, Leslie's was a popular publication that appealed to a wide audience; the persistent popularity of pieces about the transcontinental railroad speaks to both the significance of the railroad and the lure of the American West. In a year, 1877, when a massive national railway strike crippled the nation's railroads and erupted with violence in major cities, these placid scenes of the transcontinental suggested an alternative vision of unity and original purpose.

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