Robert J. Parks

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Robert J. Parks is the author of Democracy's Railroads: Public Enterprise in Jacksonian Michigan, probably the best single source on Michigan's program of internal improvements.¹

Parks was a Kalamazoo native and went to college at Western Michigan University. He then did graduate work in history at the Michigan State University, receiving the Ph.D. in 1967 (Democracy's Railroads was his dissertation²). He then served in the historical unit of the U.S. Army Medical Department, co-editing United States Army Medical Training in World War II.³ After leaving the army Parks was a professor of history at the University of Wyoming until 1976 when he resigned.⁴ There are few public records about Parks following this.

1. ⇑ Robert J. Parks, Democracy's Railroads: Public Enterprise in Jacksonian Michigan (Port Washington, NY; London: Kennikat Press, 1974), . ⇑

2. ⇑ Robert James Parks, Democracy's Railroads: Internal Improvements in Michigan, 1825-1846, 2 vols. Ph.D. diss., Michigan State University, 1967. ⇑

3. ⇑ United States, Department of the Army, Office of the Surgeon General, Medical Department of the United States Army in World War II, Administrative Series, United States Army Medical Training in World War II, edited by Col. William S. Mullins and Capt. Robert J. Parks (Office of the Surgeon General, Department of the Army, Washington DC, 1974). ⇑

4. ⇑ The University of Wyoming, Minutes of the Trustees, April 18, 1975; "Historical News," Pacific Historical Review 45, No. 3 (August 1976), 467. ⇑

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