Curator Patricia LaBounty of the Union Pacific Railroad Museum leads a journey into an era long before Twitter and YouTube in which American presidents used railroads to bring their messages into communities across the United States.
Beginning with Abraham Lincoln, presidents recognized that railroads were vital to the country’s growth, and their policies helped ensure that every town in the nation had access to the rails. Train cars carried coal, cows, cotton, and cantaloupe—and the occasional president. From the 1830s to the 1940s, if the head of state needed to travel in the United States, they went by train for business, to campaign, and for some at the end of their lives, en route to their final resting places. It wasn’t until the end of Franklin Roosevelt’s administration in 1945 that an aircraft was configured for presidential use.
LaBounty is the curator of the Union Pacific Collection at the Union Pacific Museum.
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