Railroads dominated American life at the dawn of the twentieth century -- of that there can be no doubt. By the 1930s, America’s fascination turned to a new technology -- the automobile.

As one might expect, local trains were first to fall to the rising popularity of autos. In community after community, the filling station replaced the railroad station as a focal point for travelers. The iron road had given way to the paved road.

In the late 1920s, the first commercial airlines took to the skies, though they presented no threat to railroads until after World War II. Given the primitive highways and skyways of the 1920s, railroad executives were not threatened at first. They imagined their companies would remain the West’s primary long-distance carriers, even if they lost local passenger and freight business to autos, buses and trucks.

In 1919, following World War I, the U.S. Army conducted a test. Military planners expressed reservations about the army’s over-reliance on railroad transportation. They wanted to test an alternative, should war come to America again. They ran a convoy of military vehicles from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco to see if it could be done. The trip was an eye-opener. Even the main roads were terrible, while many bridges were unable to sustain the weight of military vehicles. It took weeks to travel from one coast to another, a trip the railroads could make in a few days.

One soldier on the road trip was a young lieutenant named Dwight David Eisenhower. Later, in the mid 1940s, General Eisenhower admired the condition of German autobans, compared to slow and overcrowded U.S. highways. As a result, President Eisenhower helped launch the Interstate Highway program in 1956. The network of new interstates effectively marked the end of the railway era.

In the Northwest, signs the railroad era was passing were probably evident as early as 1930 and the coming of the Great Depression. Massive government projects in eastern Washington -- the Grand Coulee Dam and Hanford Project -- helped create new communities. Railroads no longer did that. In fact, it would be hard to point to a single community born after 1920 that owed its origin to railroad activity.

But it was more than independence and mobility that made farmers embrace the car. Autos provided direct access to Saturday markets and increased their importance in regional economic development. A Saturday trip to town meant shopping for merchandise that could be seen and touched. Ordering by catalog and waiting for shipment by rail brought delayed gratification. Goods bought in town still came by rail, but shopping now promised what is the foundation of the consumer culture -- instant gratification. No catalog or box car could compete with that.