There really was an E.H. Harriman in charge of the Union Pacific Railroad at the time this film is set. He made a career of buying bankrupt railroads, rebuilding them into prosperous entities, then selling them. He became a director of the Union Pacific in 1896, chairman of the executive committee in 1898, and president of the company in 1901 until his death in 1909 at age 61. At the time of his death he also controlled four other railroads - the Southern Pacific, the Illinois Central, the Saint Joseph and Grand Island, and the Central of Georgia - as well as the Pacific Mail Steamship Company and the Wells Fargo Express Company. He had an interest in ju-jitsu after visiting Japan, and in 1899 sponsored and accompanied an expedition to catalog the flora and fauna of Alaska that included several naturalists, including John Muir. One of his six children was W. Averill Harriman, who was President Truman's Secretary of Commerce, 48th governor of New York, and a U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union and to Great Britain.

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