Caterpillar: Great American Legend

If Henry Ford gave us automobiles and Boeing gave us airliners, then Caterpillar gave us ... Caterpillars.

The generic term for bulldozer, a crawler, a tracked earth-moving tractor is Caterpillar.

Caterpillar as a brand name of tracked vehicle was first used in 1904 on a vehicle manufactured by Holt Brothers. In 1910, a competitor, in the Tracklayer from Daniel Best's company, started fifteen years of heavy competition between the two companies until both began to suffer. The year 1925 saw Holt and Best merge, and the name they jointly chose was Caterpillar. Thus, for more than sixty years, these yellow beasts of burden have worked construction sites and tilled the land. Today, these very giants are monuments to the world's industrial growth, a household word.

Here is a photographic documentary of these "animal" wonders, upon whose very strength the world relies, as they creak and rumble their way through a day's work. Henry Rasmussen, in seven chapters, looks at the very early examples as they are both lovingly restored and allowed to rot in the graveyard. Rasmussen tells something of their development history pictorially and then shows them working, even being made, in a variety of locations. He is content that they are what they are - old, worn, rusty, dirty, new, yellow, big, heavy, huge, gigantic, useful, efficient, nd of neat, fun to watch, fun to operate, exciting, just a machine, just a tool to get the job done ... and a damn nuisance when they will not start.

His work is a stunning picture of great nostalgia, great color, of a great legend.