Mike Butler 112 pages softcover
Before the first atomic bomb was completed in 1945 at
Los Alamos, New Mexico, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway
(AT&SF) was operating twenty-four hours a day hauling war materials
and troops across the state on its transcontinental line from Los
Angeles to Chicago. Maintenance workers for the tracks and locomotives
were provided by the diverse population of New Mexico, including Native
Americans, Hispanics, and African Americans. With locomotive repair
shops and freight yards in Clovis, Albuquerque, and Gallup, the state
was well positioned to service the railroad during World War II.
Documenting all this railroad activity in New Mexico for the U.S. Office
of War Information (OWI) was photographer Jack Delano, a native-born
Ukrainian. In 1942, the OWI assigned him to photograph the wartime rail
system from Chicago to the West Coast. He traveled the AT&SF line
west across the deserts and mountains of New Mexico in March 1943, and
his photographs, featured in this book, chronicle the heroic efforts of
New Mexico's populace to keep the railroad running across their state.