Nostalgia & History > Where the Buffalo No Longer Roam

The Smithsonian magazine has an inserting article on the website,
 
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/where-the-buffalo-no-longer-roamed-3067904/
 
“The Transcontinental Railroad connected East and West—and accelerated the destruction of what had been in the center of North America.”  By Gilbert King.  SMITHSONIANMAG.COM. JULY 17, 2012
 
“The telegram arrived in New York from Promontory Summit, Utah, at 3:05 p.m. on May 10, 1869, announcing one of the greatest engineering accomplishments of the century:
 
The last rail is laid; the last spike driven; the Pacific Railroad is completed. The point of junction is 1086 miles west of the Missouri river and 690 miles east of Sacramento City.
 
The telegram was signed, ‘Leland Stanford, Central Pacific Railroad. T. P. Durant, Sidney Dillon, John Duff, Union Pacific Railroad,’ and trumpeted news of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad. After more than six years of backbreaking labor, east officially met west with the driving of a ceremonial golden spike. In City Hall Park in Manhattan, the announcement was greeted with the firing of 100 guns. Bells were rung across the country, from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco. Business was suspended in Chicago as people rushed to the streets, celebrating to the sounding of steam whistles and cannons booming.
 
Back in Utah, railroad officials and politicians posed for pictures aboard locomotives, shaking hands and breaking bottles of champagne on the engines as Chinese laborers from the West and Irish, German and Italian laborers from the East were budged from view.” 
 
[article continued on web site.]
 
Picture 1, [from the article] Celebration of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, May 10, 1869. Photo: Wikipedia.
 

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Picture 2, [from the Denver Public Library.]  Call Number: NS-642.  Title: Wild West Show train.  Date: [1901?].  Summary: William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody stands in the left midground next to a railroad track watching members of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show gather in front of a long train of stock cars for the Wild West Show. Two men walk along the tops of the stock cars.  Description: 1 copy photonegative ; 8 x 11 cm (3 x 4 in.); 1 photoprint : black and white ; 9 x 12 cm (3 1/2 x 4 1/2 in.) on album sheet 18 x 24 cm (7 x 9 1/2 in.). 
 

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the smithsonian link is really cluttered w ads. too bad... gave up reading it.