Vanishing points

Over the last 12 years, I have photographed more than 130 abandoned railroad lines in the American and Canadian West. The project is titled “Westward the Course of Empire.” The cuts, grades, collapsed tunnels and derelict trestles seen in the photographs represent a past triumph of technology over what was perceived as hostile terrain, as well as the desire and struggle to create wealth and power from the land.

The scale of the enterprise was -- and still is -- staggering. Hundreds of railroad companies, many named to evoke both place and destination, such as Carson and Colorado or Tonopah and Tidewater, constructed thousands of miles of track across immense dry basins and through rugged mountains. There was something of “Fitzcarraldo” in all of this.

These railroads helped to create what one prescient 19th century observer referred to as an industrial Sahara. What has been left behind is a vast landscape of ruins, monuments to the epic and relentless economic competition that characterized the opening of the West.

-- Mark Ruwedel Mark Ruwedel’s “Westward the Course of Empire” is on exhibit until Dec. 27 at Gallery Luisotti at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica. Ruwedel is a professor of photography at Cal State Long Beach.