"Born on the frontier at American Fork, Utah Territory, two years after the Denver & Rio Grande Western reached town, Judge Wilson McCarthy lived to try to harness the wonders of the Atomic Age." "After a youth as a cowboy on the Canadian plains, Mormon missionary in Scotland, and law student at Columbia (while working for Tammany Hall), Judge McCarthy advanced from crusading district attorney to judge and banker. He then became one of the most powerful men in America as a director of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, Herbert Hoover's response to the Great Depression. His crowning achievement would be the rescue of a legendary American railroad." "The halcyon days of railroads have passed, but the legend of the Denver & Rio Grande lives on. Crossing the Continental Divide, the storied line hauled away vast mineral wealth but had to survive various corporate incarnations, business and political machinations, and a record that for a time earned it the nickname "Dangerous and Rapidly Growing Worse." McCarthy gave the road's employees a stake in the company's success and made it into a "western railroad operated by western men.""--BOOK JACKET.