The Iron Horse (1924)
A surveyor who watched his father murdered as a boy grows up to help chart the transcontinental railroad's route, working toward both the driving of the golden spike at Promontory Summit and reckoning with his father's killer.
The Iron Horse was John Ford’s first major epic and his response to the success of The Covered Wagon, establishing the reverential railroad-and-frontier mythology that would shape Westerns for decades. It entered the National Film Registry in 2011.
Background
The Iron Horse was John Ford’s first large-scale epic and his direct response to the commercial success of the earlier Western epic The Covered Wagon. It tells the story of the building of the American transcontinental railroad, following a surveyor whose father was murdered years earlier as the railroad’s construction moves toward the driving of the golden spike at Promontory Summit.
What to watch for
Watch for the film’s scale, with large numbers of extras, livestock, and elaborate period sets meant to convey the scope of the railroad’s construction, and for how it establishes a reverential, mythologizing view of westward expansion that would shape the Western genre, including much of Ford’s own later and more famous work, for decades to come. It entered the National Film Registry in 2011, a recognition of its role in defining the large-scale historical Western.
