Why Were Railroads Needed for Travel to the West

In 1862, the Pacific Railroad Act chartered the Central Pacific and the Wedlock Pacific Railroad Companies, tasking them with building a transcontinental railroad that would link the The states from due east to west. Over the side by side 7 years, the two companies would race toward each other from Sacramento, California on the one side to Omaha, Nebraska on the other, struggling confronting great risks before they met at Promontory, Utah, on May x, 1869.

Dreams of a Transcontinental Railroad

Edifice of the Transcontinental Railroad, circa 1869.

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America's get-go steam locomotive made its debut in 1830, and over the next two decades, railroad tracks linked many cities on the East Coast. Past 1850, some 9,000 miles of track had been laid east of the Missouri River. During that same period, the first settlers began to move westward beyond the United States; this trend increased dramatically after the discovery of gold in California in 1848.

eThe overland journey–across mountains, plains, rivers and deserts–was risky and difficult, and many west migrants instead chose to travel by sea, taking the six-month route around Cape Horn at the tip of Due south America, or risking yellow fever and other diseases by crossing the Isthmus of Panama and traveling via send to San Francisco.

In 1845, the New York entrepreneur Asa Whitney presented a resolution in Congress proposing the federal funding of a railroad that would stretch to the Pacific. Lobbying efforts over the next several years failed due to growing sectionalism in Congress, only the thought remained a potent one.

In 1860, a immature engineer named Theodore Judah identified the infamous Donner Pass in northern California (where a group of westward emigrants had become trapped in 1846) as an ideal location for constructing a railroad through the formidable Sierra Nevada mountains.

By 1861, Judah had enlisted a group of investors in Sacramento to grade the Central Pacific Railroad Company. He and then headed to Washington, where he was able to convince congressional leaders besides every bit President Abraham Lincoln, who signed the Pacific Railroad Act into police the following year.

2 Competing Companies: The Fundamental Pacific and the Union Pacific Railroad

The Pacific Railroad Deed stipulated that the Central Pacific Railroad Company would offset building in Sacramento and proceed east beyond the Sierra Nevada, while a second visitor, the Union Pacific Railroad, would build westward from the Missouri River, about the Iowa-Nebraska border.

The two lines of track would meet in the middle (the bill did not designate an exact location) and each visitor would receive 6,400 acres of land (later doubled to 12,800) and $48,000 in government bonds for every mile of track built. From the beginning, then, the building of the transcontinental railroad was set up up in terms of a contest betwixt the two companies.

In the West, the Central Pacific would be dominated by the "Big Four"–Charles Crocker, Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington and Mark Hopkins. All were ambitious businessmen with no prior experience with railroads, engineering science or construction. They borrowed heavily to finance the project, and exploited legal loopholes to become the most possible funds from the government for their planned rail construction.

Disillusioned with his partners, Judah planned to recruit new investors to buy them out, but he defenseless xanthous fever while crossing the Isthmus of Panama on his mode east and died in November 1863, soon after the Cardinal Pacific had spiked its commencement runway to ties in Sacramento.

Whorl to Go along

Meanwhile, in Omaha, Dr. Thomas Durant had illegally achieved a controlling interest in the Union Pacific Railroad Visitor, giving him complete authorization over the project. (Durant would also illegally ready a company called Crédit Mobilier, which guaranteed him and other investors take chances-free profits from the railroad'south construction.) Though the Spousal relationship Pacific celebrated its ain launch in early Dec 1863, little would be completed until the stop of the Civil War in 1865.

Danger Alee: Building the Transcontinental Railroad

Chinese laborers at work on structure for the railroad congenital across the Sierra Nevada Mountains, circa 1870s.

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After Full general Grenville Dodge, a hero of the Matrimony Army, took control as chief engineer, the Union Pacific finally began to move westward in May 1866. The visitor suffered bloody attacks on its workers by Native Americans–including members of the Sioux, Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes–who were understandably threatened by the progress of the white man and his "iron horse" across their native lands.

Still, the Marriage Pacific moved relatively rapidly across the plains, compared to the slow progress of their rival visitor through the Sierra. Ramshackle settlements popped upward wherever the railroad went, turning into hotbeds of drinking, gambling, prostitution and violence and producing the enduring mythology of the "Wild Due west."

In 1865, later struggling with retaining workers due to the difficulty of the labor, Charles Crocker (who was in charge of construction for the Central Pacific) began hiring Chinese laborers. By that time, some 50,000 Chinese immigrants were living on the Westward Coast, many having arrived during the Gold Rush. This was controversial at the time, equally the Chinese were considered an inferior race due to pervasive racism.

The Chinese laborers proved to exist tireless workers, and Crocker hired more than of them; some 14,000 were toiling nether brutal working conditions in the Sierra Nevada by early on 1867. (Past dissimilarity, the work forcefulness of the Matrimony Pacific was mainly Irish gaelic immigrants and Civil War veterans.) To blast through the mountains, the Key Pacific built huge wooden trestles on the western slopes and used gunpowder and nitroglycerine to blast tunnels through the granite.

Driving Toward the Concluding Spike

Map of the transcontinental route of the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad and its connections, circa 1883.

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Past the summer of 1867, the Union Pacific was in Wyoming, having covered nearly 4 times as much ground every bit the Central Pacific. The Cardinal Pacific broke through the mountains in late June, all the same, and the hard office was finally behind them. Both companies then headed towards Table salt Lake Urban center, cutting many corners (including building shoddy bridges or sections of rails that would take to be rebuilt later) in their race to go ahead.

Past early 1869, the companies were working only miles from each other, and in March the newly inaugurated President Ulysses Southward. Grant appear he would withhold federal funds until the two railroad companies agreed on a meeting signal. They decided on Promontory Summit, northward of the Smashing Salt Lake; some 690 rails-miles from Sacramento and 1,086 from Omaha. On May 10, after several delays, a oversupply of workers and dignitaries watched as the final fasten was driven linking the Central Pacific and Spousal relationship Pacific in the "Golden Fasten Ceremony."

The aureate spike was made of 17.6-karat gold and was a souvenir of David Hewes, a San Francisco contractor and friend of "Big Four" member Leland Stanford. During the ceremony, Stanford took the beginning swing at the spike, merely accidentally struck the necktie instead. His endeavor was followed by Union Pacific Thomas Durant'south. Durant swung and missed–probable because of a hangover he was suffering from the previous evening's party in Ogden. A railroad worker ultimately drove the terminal fasten at 12:47 p.m. on May x, 1869. Telegraph cables immediately went out to President Grant and around the country with the news that the transcontinental railroad had been completed.

The gold spike was removed subsequently the ceremony and replaced with traditional iron spikes. Three other ties—1 of gold, 1 of silver and gilt, and one of argent, were likewise presented at the anniversary. The original golden fasten is now function of the collection of Stanford Academy, which was founded by Leland Stanford and his wife, Jane, in 1885 in retentivity of their only son.

Impact on the Usa

The edifice of the transcontinental railroad opened up the American West to more than rapid development. With the completion of the track, the travel time for making the 3,000-mile journeying across the United States was cut from a matter of months to under a week.

Connecting the two American coasts made the economical export of Western resource to Eastern markets easier than ever before. The railroad too facilitated w expansion, escalating conflicts between Native American tribes and settlers who at present had easier access to new territories.

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