Grenville M. Dodge

(1831-1916) lived in Omaha. Civil engineer, politician, businessman, was chief engineer of construction of Union Pacific transcontinental railroad completed in May 1869, as president of the company after 1880 he had overseen construction of almost 9,000 miles of track across the Southwest, and formed associations with many other railroads, was a Congressman for one term, known as masterful lobbyist, was appointed in 1898 by U.S. President McKinley to chair an investigation of a military supply scandal during the Spanish-American War; the building of the transcontinental railroad was regarded by historian Stephen Ambrose as the greatest engineering achievement of the nineteenth century. Consult American National Biography, Vol 6 (1999) 681-683 and American Heritage, Vol 51 (October 2000) 56-66.

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