AHC Events
March 2026 Railroad Speaker Series
Join the AHC for two lectures on the impact of railroads in America. Both talks are free and open to the public, no registration required! The exhibit hall will be open during the talks, so make sure to take a couple of extra minutes to check out “The West is Waiting—An Exploration of Railroad Advertising," a look at how railroad companies used advertising to shape how Americans imagined the West for over a century.
Saturday, march 7: "what happened to the passenger train?" with jim ehernberger
In this talk, Jim Ehernberger will trace the evolution of passenger rail in the United States from its emergence as the backbone of national transportation to its steady decline in the face of automobiles, highways, and commercial aviation. Drawing on both historical research and firsthand industry experience, he will examine how technological change and shifting public investment reshaped the role of passenger service in American life.
About the speaker: A Cheyenne native, Ehernberger devoted 35 years to the Union Pacific Railroad, serving in more than 40 positions from 1953 until his retirement in 1988. His extensive research materials and railroad records are preserved in the James L. Ehernberger Western Railroad Collection at the American Heritage Center, where they continue to support the study of railroad and transportation history.
tuesday, march 24: "Binding the nation: civil war politics and the promise of the pacific railroad" with cecily zander
The Civil War didn't just reshape the nation on the battlefield—it unleashed an unprecedented expansion of federal authority into the American West. This talk traces how wartime politics enabled the Pacific Railroad, revealing how congressional Republicans leveraged secession and military crisis to advance a transcontinental project that had been stalled for years by sectional conflict, and what that project meant for the communities and landscapes in its path.
About the speaker: Cecily Zander is an assistant professor of history at the University of Wyoming. She also serves as a Senior Fellow at the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University. Her first book The Army under Fire: The Politics of Antimilitarism in the Civil War Era, won the 2024 Wiley-Silver Prize for the best first book in Civil War History. Her next book, a history of Abraham Lincoln and the American West, will be published by Liveright. She is also working on a short history of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. In addition to teaching and writing, she edits the History in an Afternoon series at Louisiana State University Press.
