author
Denver and Rio Grande Railroad Company
A lively historian of the American West, he wrote with a storyteller’s touch about the railroads, landscapes, and rivalries that shaped the region. His work on the Rio Grande helped make a complicated railroad saga feel vivid and human.
1 Audiobook
"Around the Circle": One Thousand Miles Through the Rocky Mountains
by Denver and Rio Grande Railroad Company
About the author
Robert G. Athearn was an American historian and writer known for bringing the history of the West to a wide audience. He was born in Montana in 1914, earned his Ph.D. in history at the University of Minnesota in 1947, and spent most of his academic career as a professor of history at the University of Colorado Boulder.
He became especially respected for his books on western expansion, railroads, and regional identity. In The Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad, he traced the growth of the Rio Grande from its narrow-gauge beginnings into one of the best-known railroads of the mountain West, showing how business ambition, geography, and local conflict all shaped its story.
Athearn also served as president of the Western History Association, and his work was admired for being both deeply researched and readable. He died in 1983, but he remains a familiar name to readers interested in Colorado, railroads, and the broader history of the American West.