In his early career, Palmer helped develop the expanding railroads of the United States in Pennsylvania; this was interrupted by the American Civil War.

Palmer and Bell are notable for helping introduce to the United States the practices of burning coal (rather than wood) for railroad engines and using narrow gauge railways.

William Jackson Palmer was born in 1836 to a Hicksite sect Quaker family on their Kinsdale Farm in 1836, near Leipsic, Kent County, Delaware.

He left in the summer of 1855 for a six-month period, having arranged to write paid articles for Miner's Journal of Pottsville, Pennsylvania, to finance the trip abroad.

[2]: 8  The following year he worked at the Pennsylvania Railroad and became private secretary to President John Edgar Thomson,[2]: 8  a successful Quaker businessman.

[1]: 372  Palmer began an evaluation of converting steam engines to run on coal, which was more abundant [citation needed], rather than wood.

[1]: 114 As the American Civil War began in 1861, although his Quaker upbringing made Palmer abhor violence, his passionate abolitionism compelled him in keeping with the dictates of his conscience to enlist in the Pennsylvania volunteers.

[3] In ten days of recruiting, however, Palmer received enough applications for enlistment to form a regiment, which was authorized as the 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry.

[2]: 8 [1]: 47  Before Palmer was able to organize the regiment at Camp Alabama in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, he and a portion of it were ordered on September 9 to help the Army of the Potomac resist the Confederates invasion of Maryland.

[citation needed] Two days after the Battle of Antietam, Palmer was captured while scouting at the personal direction of McClellan, seeking information on any preparations by Lee's army to cross the Potomac River back into Virginia.

[3] Palmer was incarcerated at the notorious Castle Thunder prison on Tobacco Row, Richmond where his true identity was never uncovered.

Doubts about his identity were apparently reinforced by publication of a fictitious dispatch in the Philadelphia newspapers that purported that Palmer was in Washington, D.C., after scouting in Virginia.

When he was freed after four months of confinement, he found that his guide, the Reverend J.J. Stine, had escaped but been arrested by Union authorities, accused of betraying him to the enemy.

[citation needed] Palmer was set free in a prisoner exchange for a prominent Richmond citizen, recuperated two weeks, and rejoined his regiment in February 1863.

Palmer reorganized the regiment, personally appointed officers in whose abilities he had great trust, and had the charges against the confined soldiers dropped on the condition that they behaved going forward.

[3] At Chickamauga, Palmer's regiment was detailed as headquarters guard for the Army of the Cumberland with many troopers doled out to the various corps as couriers and scouts.

When Longstreet unexpectedly attacked the union right near Rosecrans' headquarters, Palmer gathered all the men of his regiment available and prepared to counterattack with a saber charge.

Palmer was in the vanguard of Union General George Stoneman's 1865 Raid into Virginia and North Carolina in the last two months of the Civil War.

If Palmer had pushed on to Danville, only 20 miles to the north, he might very well have captured Jefferson Davis, who up till then had not left the capital of the Confederacy.

[4]: 9899 On February 24, 1894, Palmer was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions as colonel leading the 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry at Red Hill, Alabama, January 14, 1865, where "with less than 200 men, [he] attacked and defeated a superior force of the enemy, captured their fieldpiece and about 100 prisoners without losing a man.

"[5]: 415  Six former officers of the 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry had nominated him the previous October to receive the honor, but for the scouting efforts in mufti during the Antietam Campaign that resulted in his capture.

In 1867, a very optimistic, eager 30-year-old Palmer, and his 21-year-old chief assistant Edward Hibberd Johnson, headed west from their hometown of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

[6] Palmer worked the Kansas Pacific Railway first as secretary and treasurer[2]: 8  and then as managing director responsible for extending service through south central Colorado.

Dodge, former Colorado territorial Governor Alexander Cameron Hunt, Charles B. Lambord[b] and others—and was elected president of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad in 1870.

[18] Palmer announced his intention to build a pavilion[19] and to name the spring after Zebulon Pike’s Indian guide, Chief Tahama, also known as "Rising Moose.

[2] Palmer built a house that would eventually become Glen Eyrie Castle, Scottish for "Valley of the Eagle's Nest," in 1871 near Colorado Springs, as a home for his wife and family.

[1]: 75  The Palmers traveled frequently with their children and governesses to New York and London for William's business and lived part-time at Glen Eyrie in Colorado.

In 1885, she left Glen Eyrie permanently, due to ongoing health concerns, and needing to live at a lower altitude, she returned to her home in England.

[3] Unable to travel, Palmer hosted the veterans of his 15th Pennsylvania Volunteer Regiment troopers for their annual reunion in August 1907 at Glen Eyrie.

Gazette journalist Dave Philipps said that he was "an ardent pacifist, humanitarian and champion of preserving wildlands at a time when conservation was almost unheard of.