Thomas C. Durant

Biography

Durant was born in Lee, Massachusetts, and studied medicine at Albany Medical College, graduating cum laude in 1840. He briefly served as assistant professor of surgery before leaving medicine to become a director of his uncle's grain exporting company, Durant, Lathrop and Company in New York City. Working in the prairie wheat trade, he recognized the need for improved inland transportation and turned to railroads. He began as a broker for the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad, where he met Henry Farnam.

Together they formed Farnam and Durant, a contracting company that in 1853 was commissioned to raise capital and manage construction for the Mississippi and Missouri Railroad (M&M). The M&M built Iowa's first railroad, from Davenport to Council Bluffs, and its centerpiece was a wooden railroad bridge completed in 1856, the first bridge across the Mississippi River. After a steamboat struck the bridge, boat operators sued to have it dismantled; Durant and the Rock Island hired Abraham Lincoln to defend the bridge.

In 1862 President Lincoln selected Durant's Union Pacific and its operation center in Council Bluffs as the starting point of the First transcontinental railroad. Durant manipulated stock markets, running up M&M stock by claiming he would connect the Transcontinental Railroad to it while secretly buying competing rail line stock. He overrode engineers to lay extra track in large oxbows, and in the first 2 1/2 years the Union Pacific extended no further than 40 miles from Omaha, Nebraska. Durant avoided federal oversight during the Civil War.

Marriage and family

Durant and his wife, Hannah Heloise Trimble, raised two children. Their son, William West Durant, worked as an architect, while their daughter, Héloïse Durant Rose, built a career as a writer, playwright, and critic. In 1873, Durant called his family back to the Adirondack Wilderness, where he owned half a million acres. He aimed to turn the area into a tourist destination and a retreat for the rich.

He already controlled the Adirondack Railroad and wanted funding to push the line from North Creek, New York, into Canada. He put William in charge of the project, though William later said his father kept the real authority. William pursued his own architectural ideas, creating the first Great Camp designs. He built camps Pine Knot, Uncas, and Sagamore, which were later bought by Collis P. Huntington, J.P. Morgan, and Alfred Vanderbilt.

Héloïse studied at private schools in Europe and the United States and spoke Arabic, French, German, and Italian. She reviewed books for The New York Times and wrote essays, poems, and short stories. Her dramatic poem Dante (1910) was translated into Italian and is considered the first American play staged in Italy. She started the Dante League in 1917 to promote Dante’s work.

In 1883, she signed a petition asking Columbia College to let women attend lectures and exams, alongside Susan B. Anthony, Theodore Roosevelt, and others.

Legacy and honors

Durant, Iowa, was named after him, and he endowed that community with several hundred dollars to establish its first school, which today also bears his name. He achieved construction of the first wooden railroad bridge across the Mississippi River in 1856. Durant, Polk County, Nebraska, is an unincorporated community established when the Union Pacific Railroad was extended to that point. In 1870 he was elected a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

In popular culture

Thomas C. Durant has been portrayed on screen by Forrest Fyre in the 2005 mini-series Into the West, and by Eric Rolland in The American West. A fictionalized version of Durant, played by Colm Meaney, is a central character in the AMC series Hell on Wheels, which follows Union Pacific's construction of the Transcontinental Railroad's eastern segment; Virginia Madsen played a fictional Hannah Durant in its second season. The novel Imaginary Brightness: a Durant Family Saga also fictionalizes his family life. The town of Durant, Wyoming, featured in the A&E and Netflix series Longmire, is fictional.

Did You Know?

• During the Civil War, Durant made a fortune smuggling contraband cotton from the Confederate States with help from General Grenville M. Dodge.
• Durant created the limited liability company Crédit Mobilier of America in March 1864, which he manipulated to become the majority stockholder in the Union Pacific Railroad.
• He accumulated half a million acres of land in the Adirondack Wilderness and owned the Adirondack Railroad, seeking to extend it from North Creek, New York, into Canada.