William C. Rogers papers, 1926-1993

Colonel William C. Rogers was born in October 1906. He attended the Virginia Military Institute, graduating as a mechanical engineer in 1927. He worked for the Newport News Shipbuilding Company until he joined the American Locomotive Company in 1930. He joined the Army Transportation Corps in 1942; and he served in Iran as part of the effort to keep a railroad supply line open to Russia. He also served in Europe and, later, Korea. After he retired from the Army in 1962, he did railroad research at the National Academy of Sciences for two years. Then he joined ALCO Corporation and developed high speed turbine engines and experimented with them on the Union Pacific Railroad until his retirement in 1969.

He had a wide range of intellectual and practical interests including book collecting, Calamity Jane, windmills, and developing his 80 acre ranch property, the Triple R Ranch near Wheatland, Wyoming, which was his summer home. He lived in Nebraska and Mexico during the rest of the year. He published or reprinted a number of books and pamphlets about Jim Bridger, Calamity Jane, the Union Pacific Railroad, and fossils. Rogers died in 2003.