[National Review] At the start of the 19th century, America was a rural society that depended on boats and horses for its transportation needs. A century later, it was the greatest industrial power in the world. In the interim, the railroad had carried the industrial revolution across America, building the nation as we know it today.Many nowadays forget this history, and the crucial role American workers, families, and communities played over generations in building our railroads and expanding them. And in the case of Palestine, in east Texas, that historical amnesia could have serious real-world consequences, as the Union Pacific Railroad now seeks to abandon its long-standing contractual obligations to the town.
In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, Texas was still a vast and inaccessible frontier with only a few miles of railroads in the very eastern part of the state. Then Texans started building railroads, first expanding them to cover the rest of east Texas and then, eventually, across the entire state. With millions of acres in land grants from the state, and bonds raised for them by local communities like Palestine, the railroads took off, connecting local communities across the state and connecting the state to the nation.
At the heart of Texas’s growing railroads was Palestine, where local leaders negotiated with two early Texas railroads to create a rail juncture. As an incentive, the families of Palestine and Anderson County raised a bond of $150,000 — an enormous sum in those days — and the two railroads agreed to keep their general offices and other facilities in Palestine indefinitely. That agreement was signed in 1872, and within a year the railroads met at Palestine.
In the following decades, the railroads that serviced Palestine went through many reorganizations and changes in ownership. By the early 1950s, they had been acquired by the Missouri-Pacific railroad company. "MoPac," as it was informally known, reached a deal with Palestine in 1954 to modify the original 1872 shop agreement. Palestine agreed to release the railroad from the 1872 agreement if the railroad would agree to keep 4.5 percent of its employees in Palestine across several specific job categories. If MoPac breached the contract, then the original shop agreement would go back into effect.