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Bear River City: The Short Life of a Violent Hell-on-Wheels Camp

2024

Synopsis

In late 1869, tensions violently boiled over with Union Pacific construction crews... Sub-contractors for America's first transcontinental railroad, furious over a "press-on-wheels" that had for months editorialized the publisher's hatred on everything from federal Reconstruction policies to the president to Irish laborers had created a tipping point. Enraged, a group of Irish rail bed graders and Union veterans sacked the town of Bear River City in what is now southwest Wyoming. The remarkable story, never fully told until now, is recreated in vivid detail by award-winning historian Erik J. Wright. Recipient of the State of Wyoming's Lola M. Homsher Research Grant, this book is the result of years of research and travel to the key locations in the story.

Bear River City: The Short Life of a Violent Hell-on-Wheels Camp is a critical addition to anyone's library, scholar or not, with an interest in the development of the economic and violent West.

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