Not all was rosy on the iron road. There was a toll to pay as a "broad belt of civilization" sprang up along the railroad tracks.1 Open prairies gave way to fenced ranchland and wheat fields. Bison and other wild animals were pushed aside to make room for cattle and sheep.2 American Indians, already at the margin of Western society, were forced onto reservations. The railroad served as a visible reminder that white settlers arrived by train in record numbers, threatening Native peoples’ lands and lifeways.

African Americans, recently emancipated following the Civil War, came West working on the railroads as porters and maids. Their willingness to take menial jobs created "one of the most highly institutionalized forms of industrial segregation in our land."3

The Chinese, who fled violence and famine in the southern provinces of China, arrived in America in great numbers beginning in the 1850s. Initially welcomed as a source of cheap labor for the mines and railroads, the Chinese were soon subjected to social isolation, violence and eventual expulsion. But rather than think of them merely as victims, understand they also carved out a life in the West.4