William Letchworth Patterson, UPRR Contractor

From: "Gail Whistance" gwhist@earthlink.net

... I have visited your A.J. Russell steregraph catalog and found listed there several images of the Union Pacific construction relating to my great grandfather's work. He was the Patterson of "Miller and Patterson" which is mentioned in the captions of several images. It was very exciting to find that there are images of the actual work my ancestor did. ...

You might be interested in a bit of research I have done to verify that my great grandfather William Letchworth Patterson is in fact the contractor who worked with William Miller on Cut #5 at Red Buttes and at Tunnel #2 at the head of Echo Canyon. Even in Barry Combs' book, the first names of these two contractors were not specified. I found a U.S. Supreme Court case involving the two men, and in the opinion there is a reference to Miller's work in the construction of the Union Pacific in 1868.

Here are the specific images ... related to either Cut #5 at Red Buttes or Tunnel #2 at Echo Canyon.

Large-format 33, 34, 102-106, 120, and stereographs 145, 227-231, 265-266, 267A-267C, 270, 274.

—Gail Whistance

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