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Video: 2021-01-07 - Iron Women - Women Who Helped Build American Railroads with Chris Enss (43 minutes)
Chris Enss, a historian who has written extensively about women in the American West, delivered a presentation for the Nevada County Historical Society. Her talk focused on her latest book, "Iron Women: Ladies Who Built the American Railroad." Enss highlighted the significant contributions of women to the development and success of the railroad, despite the prevailing belief at the time that women had no role in this industry. She discussed Eliza Murphy, who invented a device to improve rail wheel bearings, and Nancy P. Wilkerson, who invented the cattle car. Enss also spoke about Dr. Mary Pennington, who invented the refrigerator car, and Olive Dennis, who designed more comfortable and appealing train interiors. She emphasized the role of women in promoting train travel, highlighting Maryam Leslie, who organized a highly publicized train journey from New York to San Francisco and wrote a bestselling book about her experience. Enss also discussed Sarah Kidder, a local woman who successfully managed the Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad after her husband's death. The presentation included stories of women who influenced the railroad in negative ways, such as Laura Bullion, a member of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch gang, who participated in a train robbery. Enss concluded by highlighting the Harvey Girls, a group of waitresses who worked in Fred Harvey's restaurants along the railroad, and Mary Coulter, an architect who designed many of the Harvey House depots and restaurants.
Author: Chris Enss
Published: 2021-01-07
Original Held At:
Published: 2021-01-07
Original Held At:
Full Transcript of the Video:
Greetings, everyone. Greetings. Hello, audience. How are you? I'm going to take my mask off so you can hear me. It is January 7th, 2021. This is our first during a post-pandemic speaker night presentation. Tonight we have one of our presenters that's been here many times before, and I hope the audience enjoys her. And you folks that are at home on YouTube watching this will enjoy her as well. So we will be presenting more speaker nights presentations via the YouTube vehicle in the future. And hopefully you'll watch more. At this time I'd like to introduce Chris Inns, who many of you have seen and heard before. So let's give a round of applause for Chris. All yours. Well, thank you so much. I always enjoy coming and doing a presentation for the Nevada County Historical Society. I'm always grateful that you want to come and have me back again and hear me proud a lot about my favorite subject, which is about women in history in the American West. They accomplished so many wonderful things, and I have unearthed some amazing things that these women have done throughout the course of my years of doing it, whether they would be women entertainers, the great singers and dancers and actresses, or whether they were incredible outlaws like Bill Starr, Clamity Jane, or whether or not they were male order brides. I've also spent some time doing some wonderful research on just the prostitution of the Old West. As a matter of fact, I look back through my 50 plus books and most of them are on prostitution. So I don't know what that says about me, but you know, it is a fascinating subject. I'm going to be working on a book about the brothel in Deadwood. I don't know whether anybody has seen that television show Deadwood, but there was a gentleman by the name of Al Swearingham who owned the gym in Deadwood, and he had a brothel above his theater, Saloon Theater. And the Historical Society there bought the brothel and are redoing it to be a museum. And so I'm doing a book about it. It's going to be called Behind the Beige Door. That particular brothel didn't close until the 1940s. So it basically opened up for business in 1860 something and was in business right up until the 40s. So I'm excited once again to be writing about the world's oldest profession. So that being said, thank you all very much for being here. The recent book that I have completed and comes out officially next month is called Iron Women, Ladies Who Built the American Railroad. It really should say Ladies Who Built and Influenced the American Railroad because the women that I'm going to share with you were not necessarily women who went in with the hammer and nails and saws and put the railroad together and laid tracks and surveyed land. In fact, when the Transcontinental Railroad was completed in May 1869 and they were hammering in that golden spike to complete it all and cameras were there and people were mobbing the scene, they made a point in being able to say women hadn't any hand in this particular process. They didn't survey any land and they didn't lay any track. So they made a big deal about the fact that women had no hand in it and the reason was because suffrage was gaining a great deal of momentum in the West and this was their way of being able to say, you know, if women really deserved a right to vote they would have some sort of influence over this substantial form of transportation. They might not have had it up until 1869 but I promise you from 1869 till today women have had and played a substantial role in making the travel by train what it is today. In the book I have written about amazing women who did a variety of things for the train, as I said, influenced it. Some of the one that I've written about are inventors and one of my favorite inventors that I wrote about her name was Eliza Murphy and Eliza Murphy was an inventor who created a device to improve the way bearings on the rail wheel and the axle with the train responded and it was called packing, is what it was called. Packing was used to lubricate the axles and the bearings. Before that there just wasn't anything like that and it was just a very off start. It made travel very uncomfortable even though as I said the rail line finished in 1869 a lot of people weren't getting on board and that's because it was uncomfortable for those reasons. I wrote about Nancy P. Wilkerson who invented the cattle car. I don't know a lot of people like the cattle car, wasn't that easy? Who do you need a cattle car for? You just put the cattle, you drive the cattle from Texas all up through Oklahoma, get them into Dodge City, pack them onto trains and then you get them out of town. But it wasn't that easy. You needed to have your livestock alive when it got from Dodge all the way to the east coast and a lot of times those animals expired because there was no place for feed and water to be. So Nancy P. Wilkerson invented the cattle car which with ragged pinion mechanisms she invented these sliding partitions that separated the livestock from their feed and water. So they were able to get from point A to point B just as fat and happy as they were when they were loaded onto the train. And it was important for Nancy and she didn't necessarily do this just because there are some people who said well she's trying to be humane to the animals. That might have been a sub idea of what it is that she was focused on but indeed that wasn't it. Her husband was a rancher and he made a living off of the cattle and getting them to market and getting the top price for them. And you couldn't get the top price for them as I said if they were ailing in any way. And so she invents this particular mechanism which is just ingenious. One of the other ladies that I've written about in the book may find her picture because these ladies are so sweet. This is Mary Pennington and Dr. Mary Pennington was a scientist. She dealt primarily in spores and molds. But she was fascinated with the preservation of food and how to get food from one part of the country to the next part of the country. And it wouldn't have spoiled no moldings or anything like that. And she invented the modern day refrigerator car. And the refrigerator car there's lovely pictures in the book of her on the top of these refrigerator cars and she's testing the ventilation in the refrigerator car. She's doing all the things on top as it's going. She's writing on top to make sure that everything is proper with us. She wasn't in an office inventing it and then handing it off to a guy and saying go out and do it. But she was very hands on. And if not for her our ability to get through World War I to feed our nation during World War I would not have been the way as successful as it was without the invention of the refrigerator car. You were able to take produce from one part of the country to the next part of the country on the trains and have it be fresh as much as it could be. Have it be fresh when it got there and not different parts of the country without citrus. So I mean just key elements like that of women who influence the American railroad. I've written in here about Lily Langtree. I wrote about Lily Langtree being this amazing entertainer and indeed she was. But Lily traveled from point A to point B across the country in her own privately made car and that particular car was called the Lali. And the Lali was hugely popular and people who knew that Lily Langtree was coming into town on the Lali would race to the train depots so they could see the Lali and when they did they would subsequently buy tickets thinking that when they got on the train it would be the Lali. Of course it wasn't anything like that but so I mean Lily Langtree really took advantage of all the fineries that some of these ladies made. One of the women in the book is Olive Dennis and Olive Dennis worked for the Baltimore and Oregon Railroad and she was phenomenal because they hire her because they can't get people to buy a ticket in Cleveland and go to New Mexico. It was just when Med put it together I mean it was basically the interior looked like a couple of barrels with some benches, some wood there. That's where you sat, enjoy yourself, you're not strapped down. Here's if you need to go to the bathroom, here's a bucket. Olive Dennis came on and she invented a train that would be over the seats. She invented ventilation that would be about the seats. She invented these amazing chairs that would fit in the train where you could relax and pivot and not only could you relax and pivot but she could lay them out flat and flip them over and they became a bed. I mean she was just ingenious in being able to make this a form of transportation that everybody would find attractive. By 1877 there were still a lot of people not taking the trains and these gentlemen who were stockholders and owned train lines they were frustrated about the fact that they couldn't get people to get on the trains. I mean it wasn't very long. It was just a mere eight years from the time that the railroad came into existence to how do we get people to be a part of this? Maryam Leslie. This is a great picture of Maryam Leslie. Maryam Leslie was married to a gentleman by the name of Frank Leslie and for anybody who is familiar with the history of the Old West or you go into antique stores and you go through some of the old newspapers, you'll see Frank Leslie's illustrated newspapers and he owned several different type of newspapers that were all illustrated. Frank owned five of them. His wife Maryam worked for one and that was primarily geared, that particular illustrated magazine was geared specifically towards women. And the rail line were really trying to market to women and Maryam Leslie was not entirely faithful to her husband. She spent a lot of time romantically involved with some of these railroad tycoons who would then share with her the different problems that we can't get anybody to be on these trains. What do we do? Maryam Leslie thought here's what we're going to do. In 1877 she pulled together 10 to 12 artists, poets, songwriters, photographers. She pulled all these people together and said we are going to take the train from New York to San Francisco. It's going to be a five month journey and we're going to record everything along the way. Maryam Leslie said that she would write about the journey. The other people aboard said that they would paint pictures of the journey. Some would write poems about the journey, some would write incredible songs. I mean if Arlo Guthrie was around at that time he probably would have been hired on to be a part of this entourage that goes from New York to San Francisco. But as I said, it was a five month journey. Now, let me find the picture. Here it is. Again, Maryam knows what the trains are like and she's not going to sit on a barrel, a barrel seat. And so she hires a gentleman by the name of Senator Wagner to invent and to construct what we know as the Wagner car. The Wagner dining car, the Wagner sleeping car but it was very lush and luxurious. You can see these are velvet seats with tuffs. You can see the gas chandeliers are lining from the ceiling, the decorated ceilings themselves, the carpet. So she had him design several of those. So all of these people could travel in style. And they did travel in style. Along with that, let me find this other picture here, in addition to all of those binaries that I just showed you, here was one that was most important. It was a fully functioning restroom. This is a wonderful picture of one of the women that Maryam Leslie traveled with. It's just her in the bathroom to show you how lush it is. You can stand up in front of the sink and brush your hair. It's not small, it's not miniscule, you don't have to worry about where can you go to the restroom. It's a very plush thing. So as I said, it took five months, this trip. It wouldn't ordinarily have taken five months, but it took five months because they made all these stops and she's writing a book. So they get all the way from New York to San Francisco and then they take the train back. When Maryam Leslie and everybody gets in New York, Maryam Leslie has kept this journal along the way. She turns it into a book called My Pleasure Trip from Gotham to the Golden Gate and it sells out. Everyone buys this book. It's a huge best seller and people are flocking to train depots to buy tickets and it is said that Maryam Leslie did more for train travel in the 19th century than any other woman just because of that book. She was a great businesswoman and figured out even how to work the system afterwards. Her husband dies not too long after that and of course she inherits the Frank Leslie Illustrated newspaper archives and everything that he had. She inherits that and she decides that what she's going to do then is she's going to legally change her name from Maryam Leslie to Frank Leslie. So now she's Frank Leslie. So she travels around the United States. So now when you talk about Frank Leslie, it's not a guy anymore. It's really Maryam Leslie. But just this incredible talent with marketing. Even though, as I said, she didn't lay track, she didn't survey any land, but she does more for train travel than any woman in the 19th century. You go from someone like Maryam Leslie to our very own Sarah Kitter. And Sarah Kitter was right here in our own grass valley. Sarah Kitter is married to John Kitter and if any man in 1901 had asked about women in business, he'd be laughed at and they would have said, well women don't know anything about business. They're supposed to be at home taking care of the family and that's what they know. They don't. That's not their daily work. But think heavens Sarah Kitter was a good businesswoman and her husband John recognized that because when John passes away he leaves her everything. He leaves her the percentage of the stock in the Nevada County narrow gauge railroad. The never come, never go railroad. And it's unanimous after he passes away that she's going to take over and be the head of this particular company which was a major boon economically for Nevada County having that railroad here. Prior to that Sarah Kitter is just known for this incredible mansion. She has an adopted daughter by the name Beatrice. She's an incredible seamstress so you often saw Sarah Kitter around town with Beatrice and they'd be dressed in the exact same lace kind of outfits because Sarah Kitter was an amazing seamstress. And so you'd have that excitement of watching. I mean she was just a celebrity. Everywhere she went people wanted to know more about her. She just was a gracious woman. Had these incredible parties. And then as I say when John dies she takes it over. And when she takes it over her presidency of the California Nevada County narrow gauge railroad is known as the 12 Golden Years. And it's known as the 12 Golden Years because the line was more profitable than it had ever been would ever be. And out doing her late husband and the other people who would buy the line from her in 1913. She really was able to take over the line. She was able to build the line. She was able to pay her stockholders and pay off a substantial amount of debt. So the stockholders had a dividend. They had never had that before. When she was considering moving I mean there was a big I've written some in the book about this because there was a big fight between Kitter and another gentleman in town who said that he had helped come up with the idea of the railroad with Kitter and so he should have some of this money from the railroad. So there was a big scandal with all of that. But even with all of that going on, Sarah Kitter rises above all of that and is able to make this a very prosperous railroad. Again, not a woman who laid any track. Not a woman who surveyed any land but built the railroad. What's amazing about Sarah Kitter is wherever it is that you're reading about railroads and I did research in Harvard for some of this. You know where you find some information about Sarah Kitter? At Harvard. She was that influential in the railroad business. We go from there to I want to read this next bit to you. Read a bit from this because not all influences with the American railroad were good influences. There were a number of women who influenced the railroad but they didn't do it in a nice way. The last train to be robbed in the United States was robbed in part by a woman and her name was Laura Boyan. I want to read to you a little bit about what happened with Laura Boyan because Laura Boyan was a member of the Wild Bunch. The Wild Bunch was Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kitt and she was the mistress of one of the members of that gang, a guy by the name of Benjamin Patrick. The Great Northern Railway Coast flier number three pulled away from the train depot in Malta, Montana at 1145 on July 3rd, 1901. Malta was a typical cow town with a broad red lane, a brown dust running between a double row of false friended frame buildings. Horses, their tails swishing idly and buzzing flies stood hip shot at the hitch racks that lined the front of every store. The flier was headed west to Wagner, Montana, a slightly bigger cow town that greatly resembled Malta right down to the flies. Among the passengers traveling to Wagner was a train robber, Ben Blackie Kilpatrick. Kilpatrick was a member of Outlaw Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch gang. Two additional Wild Bunch gang members were making the trip with Kilpatrick and those people were Harvey, Kid Curry Logan and O. C. Hakes. Very well known, if you ever saw the movie Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kitt they were the ones that were showing one another that they had been written up in the newspaper and reading it. So these gentlemen were those same gentlemen. Thomas Johns, the train's engineer brought the vehicle to a sudden halt less than six miles east of Wagner. Logan had a revolver leveled at his head encouraging him to stop. The gunman had snuck on board the tender car and onto the engine cab. The fliers fireman Michael Neal was with the engineer when he was overtaken and neither man dared move a gun pointed at them. I want to show you this is a shot, this is a drawing oddly enough this is a drawing done of that particular robbery done by artists with Frank Leslie's illustrated newspaper. So how everything connects in history is always fascinating to me. So this was Kilpatrick getting on board leveling a gun at these gentlemen telling them to stop the train and as soon as they stopped the train he orders them to uncouple the baggage car from the express car because they're after the money that's in the express car. Once they get the express car uncoupled the people in the passenger car are leaning their heads out the window to see what's going on and Kilpatrick and his gang start firing over their heads to make them go back in. So they're able to get the safe they blow the safe and inside the safe is $50,000 now they have to make a very quick getaway. Who is the person waiting with the horses dressed as a man to help them get away? Laura Bullion. So Laura Bullion and Kilpatrick they divide the money up very quickly and they all take off in their separate ways. Laura goes with Kilpatrick to Missouri and it isn't until the Pinkerton's, I wrote about the Pinkerton's in the book called The Pinks, but the Pinkerton's catch up they come and try to figure out what's because they're on the trail anyway of Sundance and Butch Cassidy. So they have been trying to maneuver this and they pick up on the trail and they go to St. Louis where now Laura Bullion is in the hotel waiting for things to simmer down a bit. Kilpatrick not so much he's out on the town spending that money and as he's spending the money the Pinkerton's find out about it and they go to the hotel to arrest Laura Bullion. Laura Bullion is not forthcoming about where Kilpatrick is and the Pinkerton's aren't 100% certain that it was Kilpatrick that she was with. Kilpatrick and the Sundance kid looked a lot alike and so what she did was she lied to them and made them think that Kilpatrick had nothing to do with this that it was all the Sundance kid. Sure he was someplace else but it didn't make any difference. She put the blame on him and so now they're out looking for the Sundance kid. They're not looking for been Kilpatrick. But even through all of her efforts to help try and save her lover it doesn't work because they eventually arrest both of them. In the trial she gets 5 years Kilpatrick gets 15. He's out in 11. She's waiting for him hoping that he's turned over a new leaf but indeed he has not. The next job that he takes on is another bank robbery and not too far from the bank is someone dressed as a really with wearing his clothing that everybody now thinks was Laura Bullion but she didn't get caught there. Laura Bullion after he Kilpatrick is shot during this particular robbery and killed and Laura Bullion goes on from there to Memphis Tennessee where she becomes a seamstress for a major department store and that's how she lives out the rest of her life as a seamstress working in a department store. I mean she lives quite a long while and she's just amazing people and how as I say history intersects because some of the women that I wrote about in the pinks were on the job and trailing Laura Bullion to Missouri so it all kind of, there's nothing small in history. So as I said you have people like Laura Bullion who influenced the railroad for bad and then you have the ladies that I told you about that influenced it for good. Another woman that kind of she was bad but it turned out her influence was for good was a woman by the name of Julia Bule. Now Julia Bule was a prostitute in Virginia City, Nevada very well liked that prostitute with a heart of gold spent a great deal of time with the firemen they never really say if she was really helping the firemen put out fires but she spent so much time with the firemen that they named her and they gave her an honorary mascot position and gave her a helmet with the emblem of the city on there and a jacket and she went wherever there was a fire Julia went they were absolutely devastated when a vagrant comes through that comes to Virginia City and breaks into Julia's home and murders Julia he's subsequently hanged for what he has done the whole town show up she's so well loved and then they start naming so many things in town after her and one of the things that they name in town after her to preserve her memory was this amazing rail car which is on display right now at the railroad museum there in Virginia City and it would truck from Virginia City to Carson City and people would come out to see the Julia Bule car and they would travel the rails if they could ride Julia's car so again influence for travel in the American railroad system I want to go back because this is a picture of the transcontinental railroad when it was completed on May 10th, 1869 probably not going to be very easy for everybody to see but lots of pictures taken very few women in them if any at all as I said they made a big point in making sure that women were not photographed because they didn't have anything to do with it and they didn't want anybody to associate women in the railroad so I think that's interesting the departure that they wanted to make so no one would connect those two just fascinating with those kinds of truths one of the women, the group of women that I wrote about that I was absolutely fascinated with in order to read to you this one too because this is a book Fred Harvey was a businessman who hailed from the Leavenworth Kansas area and he was a cook at a small little restaurant there and the trains would stop and once in a while he'd be able to make a meal for somebody who rushed in really quickly to get something and then rushed back on the train because the train was waiting for nobody it was him who conceived this idea of coming up with restaurants at depots across the United States and so he teams up with the Santa Fe Railroad to pull together all these restaurants but it's not just restaurants that's not it it was going to be fine food in very clean atmosphere waited on by women in black skirts very pristine white shirts and very starched aprons that's who's going to wait on you my favorite quote from Will Rogers about the Harvey girls because that's what these ladies were called was Will Rogers said the Harvey girls kept the West in food and wives because a lot of these women who hired on and you'd have to sign a contract to hire on with the Harvey girls you couldn't just go down and say I want to wait tables that wasn't it you had to pass a test you had to promise that you were going to be in every night and not gallivanting around you had to say what your intended focus was some women wanted to get married and so they worked the Harvey houses and decided to come West hoping that they would meet the man of their dreams some women wanted to go to school so they signed contracts with the Harvey house to work for them so they could gain money to put aside to go to school so you had women from all walks of life and all reasons to hire on with the Harvey girls this is one of my favorite stories in 1897 27 year old Mabel Sloan of Florence Kansas responded to an ad in the local paper looking for work she was intrigued by the notice that said wanted young women 18 to 30 years of age of good character attractive and intelligent as it is in Harvey eating houses in the West good wages with room and means and your rooms will be furnished despite her mother's objections of women don't hold jobs outside the home Mabel responded to the advertisement and accepted a position as one of the entrepreneur Fred Harvey's as one of entrepreneur Fred Harvey's growing number of counter girls in his restaurants across the country after a vigorous training period Mabel was sent to waitress at the Casa del Sorto house of the desert in Barstow California for several months Mabel served the men and women who traveled to the area on the Atchican Topeka and Santa Fe railroad dressed in her neat black dress crisp starched white apron she tended to customers culinary needs and made sure their dining experience lacked for nothing Homer Pike a farmer at his late 40s from Hamilton Montana was one of the patrons who visited the Harvey house in early 1898 where Mabel was employed Homer was known among his friends as being frugal he did his own cooking washed and mended his own clothes and refused to buy any additional clothing even though the fabric was thin fading on the garments that he owned it was rumored he had plenty of money but spent little if nothing on frivolity he showed no interest in women or marriage and spent a great deal of time by himself until Mabel waiting on him at the restaurant and his friends until Mabel waiting on him at the restaurant his friends and family anticipated that he would die a bachelor he showed no interest as I said in women so they were quite amazed by this so according to an article on May 16th, 1899 Horace was smitten with Mabel the moment she brought him a cup of coffee the two exchanged pleasantries and after three days he dared to ask Mabel to take a walk with him she agreed and two days later the pair decided to marry Mabel resigned her position from Fred Harvey relocated to Montana and lived out the rest of her life with Homer who showered her with her factions and spoiled her with all the things his money could buy now those are the kinds of things that some of the Harvey girls came west they really wanted that life didn't always work out like that but that's the life that they wanted it just happened to work out that way for Mabel and Homer and I just since that was a real story I just had to include it in the book these ladies had to go through rigorous training and when the Harvey girls when the restaurants and the Harvey girls really took hold they marketed everything that the Harvey girls did their clothing you could go and you could buy a Harvey girl outfit if you want to their hair had to be a certain way you could go now to the beauty parlor and get your hair done like the Harvey girls they sold even into the late 1920s they would sell garments like this but they would modernize them they would make them more modern by raising the hem of the dress so everything that the Harvey girls did was marketable so it was a huge franchise and it was incredibly successful those women were the mainstay for people traveling from one part of the country to the next and everything was always uniform in the same restaurants kind of like what McDonald's patterned their business model after which was you could go to McDonald's in Cleveland it's the same McDonald's in Winslow Arizona it was the same way for Harvey House they wanted people to feel at home and it was good cooking for very reasonable prices and people were excited about it and it really took hold now it wouldn't have taken hold as much had the diners the restaurants, the depots, everything associated with Harvey House and the Santa Fe Railroad had it not looked aesthetically pleasing and for that we've turned to let me show you a picture of the Harvey this is some of the Harvey girls I think this is so sweet they roomed together and they had like kind of a big dorm if you've ever seen the Harvey girls with Judy Garland it was exactly like that nobody was breaking into song in a moment's notice with Angela Lansbury but the Harvey houses were very pristine and everything was very well clean we didn't walk away and say oh this counter is really sticky that wasn't what the Harvey houses were about so these women really did make a significant impact on the railroad but as I said it all had to be aesthetically pleasing and for that we've come to a woman by the name of Mary Coulter and Mary Coulter was an architect and an artist and one of the very first female architects hired in the west by Fred Harvey to design the interior of all of his depots, all of his restaurants some of those things are still standing as my fact if you go to the Grand Canyon and you go to the Watchtower and many of the other structures there they were all designed by Mary Coulter who was hugely influenced by the Hopi nation so she brought into everything that she did she brought some of that Native American inspiration into everything that she designed but she was remarkable this is one of the hotels that she designed in New Mexico so when people would they would take the train they would get to the depot, they would need to stay there overnight this is one of the wonderful places that she designed she designed the amazing depot in Kansas City, Missouri where she put in marble pillars and she made the counter this amazing marble she made sure that when you go to Kansas City if you've been to that amazing depot that the height of the depot is so expansive she wanted people to feel a sense of freedom she was incredibly talented but it made people want to take the train it made them want to go from point A to point B as I said prior to that you didn't see any of that going on that wasn't it probably eventually would have happened but not a lot of men would have focused on those parts of it it was friend Harvey who saw the beauty in this one of the other ladies that I write about in there she in the book she was an artist as well and she worked for the Santa Fe Railroad when they started doing what they call a sky dome on the train where they opened up the top of it and put glass over it so you could travel and feel like you were out underneath the stars well that wasn't enough Harvey ended up hiring different artists to come into these amazing murals western murals so people would think I've got to get myself really thinking about the west because I'm going west and even after World War 1 the Harvey girls or women were very instrumental because World War 1 really decimated train travel everybody was off fighting there wasn't anybody here to take the train and so when the war was over they had to really ignite train travel and the Harvey houses did that and Harvey came up his company came up with an idea called the Harvey Courier Corps which was when you got to when you took the train all the way to the Grand Canyon you could stop and see more of the scenic areas by getting into a car that was driven by other Harvey girls not dressed like this but dressed in southwestern garb and so they would take you all around and they would show you the sights of you and your family and they opened up the west and they populated the west and they made it attractive for people to want to come out this way so as I said these women did amazing things and one of the things I didn't touch on were these incredible women the telegraph operators and how quickly they had to listen to the the messages from an incoming train and relay that again to a train coming this way how quickly they had to do that and they had to test be tested to do this and sometimes the testing involved these women being in a room you'd be in a room by yourself and there'd be maybe 25 30 telegraph machines going and you'd have to focus on your telegraph machine and the really good ones would do that and the really good ones traveled everywhere and some of these women that were so good got to even meet one of the and it was really a man's position when women started doing this people were outraged but women came on and they could decipher and work on many more machines than men could work on including one of the men that was a telegraph operator who really didn't pay very much attention to it because he was really a singer and that's really what he wanted to do so when he would get off work he would go to different places and sing but they put up with that from Jean Autré and I think that that's really amazing how these women really were very very savvy business wise and could do a lot of things to make the American railroad system what it is today so the book is called Iron Women Ladies Who Built the American Railroad the book is out next month you can go on to my site which is chrisnce. com that's c-h-r-i-s-e-n-s-s. com and you can read a little bit more about it I'm doing a giving way this month if you go on my site you can register to win a book and at the end of the month I'm giving away a book again next month this book is available at the bookseller it's also available on Amazon thank you guys very much for listening I really appreciate it
Greetings, everyone. Greetings. Hello, audience. How are you? I'm going to take my mask off so you can hear me. It is January 7th, 2021. This is our first during a post-pandemic speaker night presentation. Tonight we have one of our presenters that's been here many times before, and I hope the audience enjoys her. And you folks that are at home on YouTube watching this will enjoy her as well. So we will be presenting more speaker nights presentations via the YouTube vehicle in the future. And hopefully you'll watch more. At this time I'd like to introduce Chris Inns, who many of you have seen and heard before. So let's give a round of applause for Chris. All yours. Well, thank you so much. I always enjoy coming and doing a presentation for the Nevada County Historical Society. I'm always grateful that you want to come and have me back again and hear me proud a lot about my favorite subject, which is about women in history in the American West. They accomplished so many wonderful things, and I have unearthed some amazing things that these women have done throughout the course of my years of doing it, whether they would be women entertainers, the great singers and dancers and actresses, or whether they were incredible outlaws like Bill Starr, Clamity Jane, or whether or not they were male order brides. I've also spent some time doing some wonderful research on just the prostitution of the Old West. As a matter of fact, I look back through my 50 plus books and most of them are on prostitution. So I don't know what that says about me, but you know, it is a fascinating subject. I'm going to be working on a book about the brothel in Deadwood. I don't know whether anybody has seen that television show Deadwood, but there was a gentleman by the name of Al Swearingham who owned the gym in Deadwood, and he had a brothel above his theater, Saloon Theater. And the Historical Society there bought the brothel and are redoing it to be a museum. And so I'm doing a book about it. It's going to be called Behind the Beige Door. That particular brothel didn't close until the 1940s. So it basically opened up for business in 1860 something and was in business right up until the 40s. So I'm excited once again to be writing about the world's oldest profession. So that being said, thank you all very much for being here. The recent book that I have completed and comes out officially next month is called Iron Women, Ladies Who Built the American Railroad. It really should say Ladies Who Built and Influenced the American Railroad because the women that I'm going to share with you were not necessarily women who went in with the hammer and nails and saws and put the railroad together and laid tracks and surveyed land. In fact, when the Transcontinental Railroad was completed in May 1869 and they were hammering in that golden spike to complete it all and cameras were there and people were mobbing the scene, they made a point in being able to say women hadn't any hand in this particular process. They didn't survey any land and they didn't lay any track. So they made a big deal about the fact that women had no hand in it and the reason was because suffrage was gaining a great deal of momentum in the West and this was their way of being able to say, you know, if women really deserved a right to vote they would have some sort of influence over this substantial form of transportation. They might not have had it up until 1869 but I promise you from 1869 till today women have had and played a substantial role in making the travel by train what it is today. In the book I have written about amazing women who did a variety of things for the train, as I said, influenced it. Some of the one that I've written about are inventors and one of my favorite inventors that I wrote about her name was Eliza Murphy and Eliza Murphy was an inventor who created a device to improve the way bearings on the rail wheel and the axle with the train responded and it was called packing, is what it was called. Packing was used to lubricate the axles and the bearings. Before that there just wasn't anything like that and it was just a very off start. It made travel very uncomfortable even though as I said the rail line finished in 1869 a lot of people weren't getting on board and that's because it was uncomfortable for those reasons. I wrote about Nancy P. Wilkerson who invented the cattle car. I don't know a lot of people like the cattle car, wasn't that easy? Who do you need a cattle car for? You just put the cattle, you drive the cattle from Texas all up through Oklahoma, get them into Dodge City, pack them onto trains and then you get them out of town. But it wasn't that easy. You needed to have your livestock alive when it got from Dodge all the way to the east coast and a lot of times those animals expired because there was no place for feed and water to be. So Nancy P. Wilkerson invented the cattle car which with ragged pinion mechanisms she invented these sliding partitions that separated the livestock from their feed and water. So they were able to get from point A to point B just as fat and happy as they were when they were loaded onto the train. And it was important for Nancy and she didn't necessarily do this just because there are some people who said well she's trying to be humane to the animals. That might have been a sub idea of what it is that she was focused on but indeed that wasn't it. Her husband was a rancher and he made a living off of the cattle and getting them to market and getting the top price for them. And you couldn't get the top price for them as I said if they were ailing in any way. And so she invents this particular mechanism which is just ingenious. One of the other ladies that I've written about in the book may find her picture because these ladies are so sweet. This is Mary Pennington and Dr. Mary Pennington was a scientist. She dealt primarily in spores and molds. But she was fascinated with the preservation of food and how to get food from one part of the country to the next part of the country. And it wouldn't have spoiled no moldings or anything like that. And she invented the modern day refrigerator car. And the refrigerator car there's lovely pictures in the book of her on the top of these refrigerator cars and she's testing the ventilation in the refrigerator car. She's doing all the things on top as it's going. She's writing on top to make sure that everything is proper with us. She wasn't in an office inventing it and then handing it off to a guy and saying go out and do it. But she was very hands on. And if not for her our ability to get through World War I to feed our nation during World War I would not have been the way as successful as it was without the invention of the refrigerator car. You were able to take produce from one part of the country to the next part of the country on the trains and have it be fresh as much as it could be. Have it be fresh when it got there and not different parts of the country without citrus. So I mean just key elements like that of women who influence the American railroad. I've written in here about Lily Langtree. I wrote about Lily Langtree being this amazing entertainer and indeed she was. But Lily traveled from point A to point B across the country in her own privately made car and that particular car was called the Lali. And the Lali was hugely popular and people who knew that Lily Langtree was coming into town on the Lali would race to the train depots so they could see the Lali and when they did they would subsequently buy tickets thinking that when they got on the train it would be the Lali. Of course it wasn't anything like that but so I mean Lily Langtree really took advantage of all the fineries that some of these ladies made. One of the women in the book is Olive Dennis and Olive Dennis worked for the Baltimore and Oregon Railroad and she was phenomenal because they hire her because they can't get people to buy a ticket in Cleveland and go to New Mexico. It was just when Med put it together I mean it was basically the interior looked like a couple of barrels with some benches, some wood there. That's where you sat, enjoy yourself, you're not strapped down. Here's if you need to go to the bathroom, here's a bucket. Olive Dennis came on and she invented a train that would be over the seats. She invented ventilation that would be about the seats. She invented these amazing chairs that would fit in the train where you could relax and pivot and not only could you relax and pivot but she could lay them out flat and flip them over and they became a bed. I mean she was just ingenious in being able to make this a form of transportation that everybody would find attractive. By 1877 there were still a lot of people not taking the trains and these gentlemen who were stockholders and owned train lines they were frustrated about the fact that they couldn't get people to get on the trains. I mean it wasn't very long. It was just a mere eight years from the time that the railroad came into existence to how do we get people to be a part of this? Maryam Leslie. This is a great picture of Maryam Leslie. Maryam Leslie was married to a gentleman by the name of Frank Leslie and for anybody who is familiar with the history of the Old West or you go into antique stores and you go through some of the old newspapers, you'll see Frank Leslie's illustrated newspapers and he owned several different type of newspapers that were all illustrated. Frank owned five of them. His wife Maryam worked for one and that was primarily geared, that particular illustrated magazine was geared specifically towards women. And the rail line were really trying to market to women and Maryam Leslie was not entirely faithful to her husband. She spent a lot of time romantically involved with some of these railroad tycoons who would then share with her the different problems that we can't get anybody to be on these trains. What do we do? Maryam Leslie thought here's what we're going to do. In 1877 she pulled together 10 to 12 artists, poets, songwriters, photographers. She pulled all these people together and said we are going to take the train from New York to San Francisco. It's going to be a five month journey and we're going to record everything along the way. Maryam Leslie said that she would write about the journey. The other people aboard said that they would paint pictures of the journey. Some would write poems about the journey, some would write incredible songs. I mean if Arlo Guthrie was around at that time he probably would have been hired on to be a part of this entourage that goes from New York to San Francisco. But as I said, it was a five month journey. Now, let me find the picture. Here it is. Again, Maryam knows what the trains are like and she's not going to sit on a barrel, a barrel seat. And so she hires a gentleman by the name of Senator Wagner to invent and to construct what we know as the Wagner car. The Wagner dining car, the Wagner sleeping car but it was very lush and luxurious. You can see these are velvet seats with tuffs. You can see the gas chandeliers are lining from the ceiling, the decorated ceilings themselves, the carpet. So she had him design several of those. So all of these people could travel in style. And they did travel in style. Along with that, let me find this other picture here, in addition to all of those binaries that I just showed you, here was one that was most important. It was a fully functioning restroom. This is a wonderful picture of one of the women that Maryam Leslie traveled with. It's just her in the bathroom to show you how lush it is. You can stand up in front of the sink and brush your hair. It's not small, it's not miniscule, you don't have to worry about where can you go to the restroom. It's a very plush thing. So as I said, it took five months, this trip. It wouldn't ordinarily have taken five months, but it took five months because they made all these stops and she's writing a book. So they get all the way from New York to San Francisco and then they take the train back. When Maryam Leslie and everybody gets in New York, Maryam Leslie has kept this journal along the way. She turns it into a book called My Pleasure Trip from Gotham to the Golden Gate and it sells out. Everyone buys this book. It's a huge best seller and people are flocking to train depots to buy tickets and it is said that Maryam Leslie did more for train travel in the 19th century than any other woman just because of that book. She was a great businesswoman and figured out even how to work the system afterwards. Her husband dies not too long after that and of course she inherits the Frank Leslie Illustrated newspaper archives and everything that he had. She inherits that and she decides that what she's going to do then is she's going to legally change her name from Maryam Leslie to Frank Leslie. So now she's Frank Leslie. So she travels around the United States. So now when you talk about Frank Leslie, it's not a guy anymore. It's really Maryam Leslie. But just this incredible talent with marketing. Even though, as I said, she didn't lay track, she didn't survey any land, but she does more for train travel than any woman in the 19th century. You go from someone like Maryam Leslie to our very own Sarah Kitter. And Sarah Kitter was right here in our own grass valley. Sarah Kitter is married to John Kitter and if any man in 1901 had asked about women in business, he'd be laughed at and they would have said, well women don't know anything about business. They're supposed to be at home taking care of the family and that's what they know. They don't. That's not their daily work. But think heavens Sarah Kitter was a good businesswoman and her husband John recognized that because when John passes away he leaves her everything. He leaves her the percentage of the stock in the Nevada County narrow gauge railroad. The never come, never go railroad. And it's unanimous after he passes away that she's going to take over and be the head of this particular company which was a major boon economically for Nevada County having that railroad here. Prior to that Sarah Kitter is just known for this incredible mansion. She has an adopted daughter by the name Beatrice. She's an incredible seamstress so you often saw Sarah Kitter around town with Beatrice and they'd be dressed in the exact same lace kind of outfits because Sarah Kitter was an amazing seamstress. And so you'd have that excitement of watching. I mean she was just a celebrity. Everywhere she went people wanted to know more about her. She just was a gracious woman. Had these incredible parties. And then as I say when John dies she takes it over. And when she takes it over her presidency of the California Nevada County narrow gauge railroad is known as the 12 Golden Years. And it's known as the 12 Golden Years because the line was more profitable than it had ever been would ever be. And out doing her late husband and the other people who would buy the line from her in 1913. She really was able to take over the line. She was able to build the line. She was able to pay her stockholders and pay off a substantial amount of debt. So the stockholders had a dividend. They had never had that before. When she was considering moving I mean there was a big I've written some in the book about this because there was a big fight between Kitter and another gentleman in town who said that he had helped come up with the idea of the railroad with Kitter and so he should have some of this money from the railroad. So there was a big scandal with all of that. But even with all of that going on, Sarah Kitter rises above all of that and is able to make this a very prosperous railroad. Again, not a woman who laid any track. Not a woman who surveyed any land but built the railroad. What's amazing about Sarah Kitter is wherever it is that you're reading about railroads and I did research in Harvard for some of this. You know where you find some information about Sarah Kitter? At Harvard. She was that influential in the railroad business. We go from there to I want to read this next bit to you. Read a bit from this because not all influences with the American railroad were good influences. There were a number of women who influenced the railroad but they didn't do it in a nice way. The last train to be robbed in the United States was robbed in part by a woman and her name was Laura Boyan. I want to read to you a little bit about what happened with Laura Boyan because Laura Boyan was a member of the Wild Bunch. The Wild Bunch was Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kitt and she was the mistress of one of the members of that gang, a guy by the name of Benjamin Patrick. The Great Northern Railway Coast flier number three pulled away from the train depot in Malta, Montana at 1145 on July 3rd, 1901. Malta was a typical cow town with a broad red lane, a brown dust running between a double row of false friended frame buildings. Horses, their tails swishing idly and buzzing flies stood hip shot at the hitch racks that lined the front of every store. The flier was headed west to Wagner, Montana, a slightly bigger cow town that greatly resembled Malta right down to the flies. Among the passengers traveling to Wagner was a train robber, Ben Blackie Kilpatrick. Kilpatrick was a member of Outlaw Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch gang. Two additional Wild Bunch gang members were making the trip with Kilpatrick and those people were Harvey, Kid Curry Logan and O. C. Hakes. Very well known, if you ever saw the movie Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kitt they were the ones that were showing one another that they had been written up in the newspaper and reading it. So these gentlemen were those same gentlemen. Thomas Johns, the train's engineer brought the vehicle to a sudden halt less than six miles east of Wagner. Logan had a revolver leveled at his head encouraging him to stop. The gunman had snuck on board the tender car and onto the engine cab. The fliers fireman Michael Neal was with the engineer when he was overtaken and neither man dared move a gun pointed at them. I want to show you this is a shot, this is a drawing oddly enough this is a drawing done of that particular robbery done by artists with Frank Leslie's illustrated newspaper. So how everything connects in history is always fascinating to me. So this was Kilpatrick getting on board leveling a gun at these gentlemen telling them to stop the train and as soon as they stopped the train he orders them to uncouple the baggage car from the express car because they're after the money that's in the express car. Once they get the express car uncoupled the people in the passenger car are leaning their heads out the window to see what's going on and Kilpatrick and his gang start firing over their heads to make them go back in. So they're able to get the safe they blow the safe and inside the safe is $50,000 now they have to make a very quick getaway. Who is the person waiting with the horses dressed as a man to help them get away? Laura Bullion. So Laura Bullion and Kilpatrick they divide the money up very quickly and they all take off in their separate ways. Laura goes with Kilpatrick to Missouri and it isn't until the Pinkerton's, I wrote about the Pinkerton's in the book called The Pinks, but the Pinkerton's catch up they come and try to figure out what's because they're on the trail anyway of Sundance and Butch Cassidy. So they have been trying to maneuver this and they pick up on the trail and they go to St. Louis where now Laura Bullion is in the hotel waiting for things to simmer down a bit. Kilpatrick not so much he's out on the town spending that money and as he's spending the money the Pinkerton's find out about it and they go to the hotel to arrest Laura Bullion. Laura Bullion is not forthcoming about where Kilpatrick is and the Pinkerton's aren't 100% certain that it was Kilpatrick that she was with. Kilpatrick and the Sundance kid looked a lot alike and so what she did was she lied to them and made them think that Kilpatrick had nothing to do with this that it was all the Sundance kid. Sure he was someplace else but it didn't make any difference. She put the blame on him and so now they're out looking for the Sundance kid. They're not looking for been Kilpatrick. But even through all of her efforts to help try and save her lover it doesn't work because they eventually arrest both of them. In the trial she gets 5 years Kilpatrick gets 15. He's out in 11. She's waiting for him hoping that he's turned over a new leaf but indeed he has not. The next job that he takes on is another bank robbery and not too far from the bank is someone dressed as a really with wearing his clothing that everybody now thinks was Laura Bullion but she didn't get caught there. Laura Bullion after he Kilpatrick is shot during this particular robbery and killed and Laura Bullion goes on from there to Memphis Tennessee where she becomes a seamstress for a major department store and that's how she lives out the rest of her life as a seamstress working in a department store. I mean she lives quite a long while and she's just amazing people and how as I say history intersects because some of the women that I wrote about in the pinks were on the job and trailing Laura Bullion to Missouri so it all kind of, there's nothing small in history. So as I said you have people like Laura Bullion who influenced the railroad for bad and then you have the ladies that I told you about that influenced it for good. Another woman that kind of she was bad but it turned out her influence was for good was a woman by the name of Julia Bule. Now Julia Bule was a prostitute in Virginia City, Nevada very well liked that prostitute with a heart of gold spent a great deal of time with the firemen they never really say if she was really helping the firemen put out fires but she spent so much time with the firemen that they named her and they gave her an honorary mascot position and gave her a helmet with the emblem of the city on there and a jacket and she went wherever there was a fire Julia went they were absolutely devastated when a vagrant comes through that comes to Virginia City and breaks into Julia's home and murders Julia he's subsequently hanged for what he has done the whole town show up she's so well loved and then they start naming so many things in town after her and one of the things that they name in town after her to preserve her memory was this amazing rail car which is on display right now at the railroad museum there in Virginia City and it would truck from Virginia City to Carson City and people would come out to see the Julia Bule car and they would travel the rails if they could ride Julia's car so again influence for travel in the American railroad system I want to go back because this is a picture of the transcontinental railroad when it was completed on May 10th, 1869 probably not going to be very easy for everybody to see but lots of pictures taken very few women in them if any at all as I said they made a big point in making sure that women were not photographed because they didn't have anything to do with it and they didn't want anybody to associate women in the railroad so I think that's interesting the departure that they wanted to make so no one would connect those two just fascinating with those kinds of truths one of the women, the group of women that I wrote about that I was absolutely fascinated with in order to read to you this one too because this is a book Fred Harvey was a businessman who hailed from the Leavenworth Kansas area and he was a cook at a small little restaurant there and the trains would stop and once in a while he'd be able to make a meal for somebody who rushed in really quickly to get something and then rushed back on the train because the train was waiting for nobody it was him who conceived this idea of coming up with restaurants at depots across the United States and so he teams up with the Santa Fe Railroad to pull together all these restaurants but it's not just restaurants that's not it it was going to be fine food in very clean atmosphere waited on by women in black skirts very pristine white shirts and very starched aprons that's who's going to wait on you my favorite quote from Will Rogers about the Harvey girls because that's what these ladies were called was Will Rogers said the Harvey girls kept the West in food and wives because a lot of these women who hired on and you'd have to sign a contract to hire on with the Harvey girls you couldn't just go down and say I want to wait tables that wasn't it you had to pass a test you had to promise that you were going to be in every night and not gallivanting around you had to say what your intended focus was some women wanted to get married and so they worked the Harvey houses and decided to come West hoping that they would meet the man of their dreams some women wanted to go to school so they signed contracts with the Harvey house to work for them so they could gain money to put aside to go to school so you had women from all walks of life and all reasons to hire on with the Harvey girls this is one of my favorite stories in 1897 27 year old Mabel Sloan of Florence Kansas responded to an ad in the local paper looking for work she was intrigued by the notice that said wanted young women 18 to 30 years of age of good character attractive and intelligent as it is in Harvey eating houses in the West good wages with room and means and your rooms will be furnished despite her mother's objections of women don't hold jobs outside the home Mabel responded to the advertisement and accepted a position as one of the entrepreneur Fred Harvey's as one of entrepreneur Fred Harvey's growing number of counter girls in his restaurants across the country after a vigorous training period Mabel was sent to waitress at the Casa del Sorto house of the desert in Barstow California for several months Mabel served the men and women who traveled to the area on the Atchican Topeka and Santa Fe railroad dressed in her neat black dress crisp starched white apron she tended to customers culinary needs and made sure their dining experience lacked for nothing Homer Pike a farmer at his late 40s from Hamilton Montana was one of the patrons who visited the Harvey house in early 1898 where Mabel was employed Homer was known among his friends as being frugal he did his own cooking washed and mended his own clothes and refused to buy any additional clothing even though the fabric was thin fading on the garments that he owned it was rumored he had plenty of money but spent little if nothing on frivolity he showed no interest in women or marriage and spent a great deal of time by himself until Mabel waiting on him at the restaurant and his friends until Mabel waiting on him at the restaurant his friends and family anticipated that he would die a bachelor he showed no interest as I said in women so they were quite amazed by this so according to an article on May 16th, 1899 Horace was smitten with Mabel the moment she brought him a cup of coffee the two exchanged pleasantries and after three days he dared to ask Mabel to take a walk with him she agreed and two days later the pair decided to marry Mabel resigned her position from Fred Harvey relocated to Montana and lived out the rest of her life with Homer who showered her with her factions and spoiled her with all the things his money could buy now those are the kinds of things that some of the Harvey girls came west they really wanted that life didn't always work out like that but that's the life that they wanted it just happened to work out that way for Mabel and Homer and I just since that was a real story I just had to include it in the book these ladies had to go through rigorous training and when the Harvey girls when the restaurants and the Harvey girls really took hold they marketed everything that the Harvey girls did their clothing you could go and you could buy a Harvey girl outfit if you want to their hair had to be a certain way you could go now to the beauty parlor and get your hair done like the Harvey girls they sold even into the late 1920s they would sell garments like this but they would modernize them they would make them more modern by raising the hem of the dress so everything that the Harvey girls did was marketable so it was a huge franchise and it was incredibly successful those women were the mainstay for people traveling from one part of the country to the next and everything was always uniform in the same restaurants kind of like what McDonald's patterned their business model after which was you could go to McDonald's in Cleveland it's the same McDonald's in Winslow Arizona it was the same way for Harvey House they wanted people to feel at home and it was good cooking for very reasonable prices and people were excited about it and it really took hold now it wouldn't have taken hold as much had the diners the restaurants, the depots, everything associated with Harvey House and the Santa Fe Railroad had it not looked aesthetically pleasing and for that we've turned to let me show you a picture of the Harvey this is some of the Harvey girls I think this is so sweet they roomed together and they had like kind of a big dorm if you've ever seen the Harvey girls with Judy Garland it was exactly like that nobody was breaking into song in a moment's notice with Angela Lansbury but the Harvey houses were very pristine and everything was very well clean we didn't walk away and say oh this counter is really sticky that wasn't what the Harvey houses were about so these women really did make a significant impact on the railroad but as I said it all had to be aesthetically pleasing and for that we've come to a woman by the name of Mary Coulter and Mary Coulter was an architect and an artist and one of the very first female architects hired in the west by Fred Harvey to design the interior of all of his depots, all of his restaurants some of those things are still standing as my fact if you go to the Grand Canyon and you go to the Watchtower and many of the other structures there they were all designed by Mary Coulter who was hugely influenced by the Hopi nation so she brought into everything that she did she brought some of that Native American inspiration into everything that she designed but she was remarkable this is one of the hotels that she designed in New Mexico so when people would they would take the train they would get to the depot, they would need to stay there overnight this is one of the wonderful places that she designed she designed the amazing depot in Kansas City, Missouri where she put in marble pillars and she made the counter this amazing marble she made sure that when you go to Kansas City if you've been to that amazing depot that the height of the depot is so expansive she wanted people to feel a sense of freedom she was incredibly talented but it made people want to take the train it made them want to go from point A to point B as I said prior to that you didn't see any of that going on that wasn't it probably eventually would have happened but not a lot of men would have focused on those parts of it it was friend Harvey who saw the beauty in this one of the other ladies that I write about in there she in the book she was an artist as well and she worked for the Santa Fe Railroad when they started doing what they call a sky dome on the train where they opened up the top of it and put glass over it so you could travel and feel like you were out underneath the stars well that wasn't enough Harvey ended up hiring different artists to come into these amazing murals western murals so people would think I've got to get myself really thinking about the west because I'm going west and even after World War 1 the Harvey girls or women were very instrumental because World War 1 really decimated train travel everybody was off fighting there wasn't anybody here to take the train and so when the war was over they had to really ignite train travel and the Harvey houses did that and Harvey came up his company came up with an idea called the Harvey Courier Corps which was when you got to when you took the train all the way to the Grand Canyon you could stop and see more of the scenic areas by getting into a car that was driven by other Harvey girls not dressed like this but dressed in southwestern garb and so they would take you all around and they would show you the sights of you and your family and they opened up the west and they populated the west and they made it attractive for people to want to come out this way so as I said these women did amazing things and one of the things I didn't touch on were these incredible women the telegraph operators and how quickly they had to listen to the the messages from an incoming train and relay that again to a train coming this way how quickly they had to do that and they had to test be tested to do this and sometimes the testing involved these women being in a room you'd be in a room by yourself and there'd be maybe 25 30 telegraph machines going and you'd have to focus on your telegraph machine and the really good ones would do that and the really good ones traveled everywhere and some of these women that were so good got to even meet one of the and it was really a man's position when women started doing this people were outraged but women came on and they could decipher and work on many more machines than men could work on including one of the men that was a telegraph operator who really didn't pay very much attention to it because he was really a singer and that's really what he wanted to do so when he would get off work he would go to different places and sing but they put up with that from Jean Autré and I think that that's really amazing how these women really were very very savvy business wise and could do a lot of things to make the American railroad system what it is today so the book is called Iron Women Ladies Who Built the American Railroad the book is out next month you can go on to my site which is chrisnce. com that's c-h-r-i-s-e-n-s-s. com and you can read a little bit more about it I'm doing a giving way this month if you go on my site you can register to win a book and at the end of the month I'm giving away a book again next month this book is available at the bookseller it's also available on Amazon thank you guys very much for listening I really appreciate it