Capturing a Real Historic Moment

The picture on the front of this post card is a capture of the building of the Transcontinental Railroad in the United States. The picture was taken at Gold Station, California, which is about 92 kilomters northeast of Sacramento, California. This picture is of a work train of the Central Pacific at Dixie Cut near Gold Run Station May 1865 at the rail head in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California when the grade was being cut above Auburn for tracks of the first transcontinental railroad. This website has been very valuable in helping me to find any information about the picture on the front of the post card. https://calisphere.org The picture was taken by Alfred A. Hart (1816 – 1908) Alfred A. Hart was born in Connecticut in 1816. In 1865 he was commissioned to photograph the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR) and was promoted to the CPRR's official photographer in 1866. Hart would photograph along the CPRR line in the summers between 1865 and 1868. Hart was terminated from the CPRR in 1869. He died in 1908 in Alameda County, California. There are many stereographs of the Central Pacific Railroad taken by Alfred A. Hart depicting the construction and surrounding landscape of the Central Pacific Railroad in northern California and Nevada between 1862-1869.

This post card is part of the MASTER PHOTOGRAPHERS series that was published by the Lightfoot Collection in Huntington Station, New York. Last week's post card was number 21 in the series; this post card is number 25. You can see all of the Masters at this website: http://wallywombatscollectables.com/Master-Photographer-by-Lightfoot.php