Railroads were mostly used in the East Coast, but it soon realized that in order to improve Westward expansion and overall trade, railroads should expand to the West. The idea of building a railroad from coast to coast started with a man named Asa Whitney. He presented the idea to Congress but was shot down (multiple times) due to sectionalism. Gold was later discovered in California, setting the stage for the next ambitious entrepreneur to again propose the idea of a transcontinental railroad.
In 1860-1861, up and coming engineer, Theodore Judah, was able to convince people on both the West and East coast to build a railroad that would meet in the middle of the US. This included Abraham Lincoln who signed the Pacific Railway Act.
In the West, the Central Pacific began to hire Chinese immigrants to work on building the railroad. They were large in the numbers from the gold rush with 14,000 working on the West side of the railroad.
The Union Pacific company had a rough start, eventually beginning to build in in mid-1866. Once production began, they were supposedly attacked by Indian tribes and ramshackle buildings would pop up wherever the track was placed, making it look bad for business.
Both sides continued to experience hardships. The Pacific Central had to navigate a way through the Sierra Nevadas while the East side was covering a lot of ground, yet the sides had still not agreed on a meeting point.
The companies finally met in Salt Lake City, Utah where they had the “Golden Spike Ceremony”. At this ceremony, a golden spike was hammered into the railroad to connect both ends, but was promptly removed with an orthodox steel spike.
The Transcontinental Railroad took seven years to complete and was made possible by the back breaking labor of several thousand people. This was good in terms of a journey coast to coast would take months could now be completed in a matter of weeks. But on the other hand, solidified the exclusion of land ownership for the Native Americans. Although if we were to look through the lens of the Americans, the railroad helped increase Westward expansion and further industrialized the West.
Sources
https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/transcontinental-railroad
https://www.loc.gov/collections/railroad-maps-1828-to-1900/articles-and-essays/history-of-railroads-and-maps/the-transcontinental-railroad/
https://railroad.lindahall.org/essays/brief-history.html
I think your post does a good job of explaining the history of the transcontinental railroad, focusing on the actual construction of the railroad instead of its economic impacts in Wall Street. I looked further into the challenges the Central Pacific faced when crossing the Sierras, using many Chinese workers as mentioned in your post. The longest and most challenging tunnel constructed was the Summit Tunnel through Donner Pass: 1,659 feet of tunnel through solid granite. The tunnel was dug from three sides: the west side, the east side, and through a hole through the top of the granite wall. The tunnel was completed in a remarkable 16 months, incredibly fast compared to the predicted 3 years of work, enabling the Central Pacific to begin laying tracks through the much smoother topography of Nevada. The tunnel is open to the public today, with visitors being able to walk through the entire length of the tunnel, although the railroad tracks are no more. Today, trains still use the Donner pass (using a new railroad passing close to the original tracks) as one of the only corridors to freight goods into California through the Sierra Nevadas.
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https://www.uprrmuseum.org/curator/summit_tunnel.shtml
This title is amazing. I think mentioning the Chinese workers is really important because they did large amounts of essential, dangerous work and didn't get credit for it. The construction of this railroad was a serious feat and very impressive and I think your post helps show that. The fact that two companies decided to race is hilarious but also pretty smart. the goal of the railroad was also very supported by the fact that gold was discovered in California and people wanted to be able to go West. It turns out that while trying to win both companies cut corners and built bad infrastructure that had to be rebuilt. The golden spike was actually missed twice while it was supposed to be put in.
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Super thorough article about railroads and I love how you included the effects of the railroad on Chinese immigration and Native Americans living on land where the trains were being built on. Upon further research, I read that the railroads were the single biggest contributor to loss of bison. Additionally, Native American were at cultural odds with white homesteaders who'd tried to cultivate land near rail. This inevitably caused a lot of conflict and tension within the region.
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I like how your post covered the mass immigration of Chinese workers which would eventually lead to the Chinese Exclusion act of 1882. However, when reading your article, I also began to wonder of the origin of the steam locomotive. It turns out that these steam locomotives were first developed in the United Kingdom and was first build by Richard Trevithick who invented the first high pressure steam engine. In a way, this is what also caused the mass scramble for coal as trains were pivotal for the developing economy during the time. You could say that railroads lead to child labor as only small children could fit in some of the coal mines. In a way, the high use of railroads would contribute to the development of worker's unions as black lung was a huge safety hazard during the time.
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