The history of the United States in the years between the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the dawn of the twentieth century can, from one perspective, be told through the history of the railroad industry. Before the early 1870s, about 45,000 miles of track had been laid. By 1900, 170,000 miles of track had been added. It was the Gilded Age, when business tycoons like William Henry Vanderbilt amassed immense fortunes, not just in the railroad industry but also in steel, oil, banking, timber, textiles, liquor, and other industries. The names of many of these tycoons, often characterized as “robber barons,” remain familiar, for many of their descendants remain active in industry and politics, and many of the names—John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, Leland Stanford, Andrew W. Mellon, J. B. Duke, Cornelius Vanderbilt— can be found above the entryways of the universities, museums, foundations, and other enterprises they endowed. In some cases, their priceless art collections preserved the works of the Old Masters for posterity and found homes in museums.