Photojournalist D. C. Jesse Burkhardt, author of Northbound Lights: Tracks Across Michigan and Wisconsin, was born in Jackson, Michigan, in 1953. A New York Central mainline cut through the fields less than a mile from his boyhood home. He graduated from Jackson Community College in his hometown in 1973, moved to Oregon in 1975, and later graduated from the University of Oregon. Burkhardt served as an editor with four community newspapers in the Pacific Northwest in a career spanning twenty-three years and "semi-retired" in 2017. Currently, he works part-time transporting train crews for BNSF in Washington. He has published several books on railroad history, including Traces of the Ann Arbor Railroad for America Through Time in 2021 and Backwoods Railroads: Branchlines & Shortlines of Western Oregon for Washington State University Press in 2022.