So I looked in the Transportation File upstairs at the Johnson County Historical Society and did a little reading. Did you know that getting a railroad to come through your town was once so important that people killed each other over it. Here, read this:
Then after you shot all the right people and got a railroad line, they would defraud you and your neighbors by selling you worthless land out west. Here's an example:
The above story is about the Northern Pacific Railroad but apparently MO PAC had an Imegration (sic)Bureau, too. And I'll bet that one of the Imegration Bureau members pictured above was a capper from Warrensburg with capacious pockets. (A capper is a huckster.)
Wow! What a story!
ReplyDeleteanother great story, thank you!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.let.rug.nl/usa/essays/1801-1900/the-iron-horse/land-departments-and-bureaus-of-immigration.php
ReplyDeleteLand Departments and Bureaus of Immigration
ReplyDeleteLand-grant railroads became the West's principal colonizers. Their benefit was two-fold: newcomers would not only buy their land, but create way traffic previously lacking in the barely settled region. Soon every western railroad set up both a Land Department and a Bureau of Immigration. The Land Department took care of selling the alternate sections granted by the government and priced the land - usually at from $2 to $8 an acre. It arranged credit terms needed by the immigrants and supervised numerous activities to attract prospects: reduced round-trip tickets for possible buyers, land-viewing expeditions where purchasers were luxuriously entertained, elaborate "reception houses" along the way where buyers and land viewers were accommodated. Land Departments worked long and hard to attract settlers.
Thanks, Bruce. You always find the most interesting information.
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