James Pugh Kirkwood (27 March 1807 – 22 April 1877) was a 19th-century American civil engineer, and general superintendent of the Erie Railroad in the year 1849–1850. He left the Erie to go to the southwest to construct railroads, and he made the first survey for the Pacific Railroad (later the Missouri Pacific Railroad) west from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains. The towns of Kirkwood, Missouri (outside St. Louis and a current Amtrak stop) and Kirkwood, New York are named in his honor. In the late 1860s he served as president of the American Society of Civil Engineers.
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