The Race Across America: The First Transcontinental

Railroad

By Brandon Foo

Introduction:

• The transcontinental railroad was an innovated technology by conveniently and efficiently letting people travel across the country. Replacing months of travel to mere weeks, it allowed communication and trade across vast amounts of distances. It employed both Chinese immigrants and Irish workers who helped build the railroad. After it was completed, it united the country together and helped build the way for commerce, people and ideas to travel from the east to the west.

Part 1: How it was built

Union Pacific Railroad• The Union Pacific Railroad

would start at Omaha, Nebraska and go west

Central Pacific Railroad• The Central Pacific

Railroad would start at Sacramento, California and go east

Pacific Railroad Acts of 1862 and 1864

• It outlined how the railroad was going to be built, the route it was going to take and how it was going to get funded.

• The path that they would go through followed the established Oregon and California trails, which was used at the time by wagon trains, stagecoach lines and the Pony Express.

Part 2: Technology Usage

Black Powder/Nitroglycerin • Black powder was usually used

to blast through the hard rock, but some situations, nitroglycerin had to be used.

• Nitroglycerin at the time was fairly new as a blasting tool and was very dangerous to transport, so they had to make it on the site.

Telegraph Lines• Brought instant communication to

people working along the tracks to people across the nation

• Used on the day the railroad was completed where telecommunication lines were wrapped around the last spike on the track and whenever the person struck the spike, the sound pulsated across the nation.

Part 2 Continued

Snow sheds• Snow and avalanches were

delaying construction and supervisors had to devise a plan to overcome it. Snow sheds were built by making a shelter over the tracks so the snow would not interfere the construction of the railroad

Bridges/Trestle Bridges• Trestle bridges were built

when there was a deep gorge that the railroad had to go over and was usually built with timber until it could have been replaced with iron, which is more durable and permeant.

Part 3: Social Impact

Chinese Immigrants• The Chinese were the backbone of

building the tracks for the Central Pacific and compromised nearly 80% of the workforce

• They worked in eight hour shifts and only stopped when another person had to put in the black powder, where they lit fuse and would then run to a safe distance to avoid the explosion.

Irish Immigrants and Civil War Veterans

• On the Union Pacific Railroad, it mostly consisted of Irish immigrants and Civil War Veterans.

• The Irish workers and veterans constantly got drunk, went to brothels and gambling dens which brought a lot of vices to the towns that the tracks went through.

Part 3 Continued

Mormons• The main reason why the Mormons

worked on the railroad was because it would go through the Utah territory, which is where most of them were located

• The Mormons helped build 350 miles of track in exchange for $2,125,000 million and the railroad going through Salt Lake City

Native Americans• For the Native Americans, the

transcontinental railroad was a travesty for them, since the railroad entered territory that they held

• They soon began raids on the labor camps along the line to try to stop their progress.

• The railroad company responded by increasing their security and killing off Bison, which is a source of food for the Native Americans

Part 4: Impact/Importance

• The culmination of the railroad being finished was when the golden spike was struck, a symbolic act of finishing the railroad, where cities and people across the nation participated in the event

• It made the flow of ideas and material to flow more easily across the country, people could move to the west cheaper and faster, and opened the west for settlement.

Conclusion: How it relates to today

• Instead of trains and railroads shrinking the time for information and people to travel the country, now it is the internet and airplanes doing the job. With the age of the internet and near instant information, anyone can connect with anyone, anywhere.

References

•The New York Herald, The Pacific Railroad, May 12, 1869

•Stephen Ambrose, Nothing like it in the world: The men who built the transcontinental railroad, November 6, 2001

•James E. Vance, The North American Railroad, 1995 

•History.com staff, Transcontinental Railroad, 2010

•Richard White, Transcontinental Railroad: Compressing Time and Space, 2011

•“History: First Transcontinental Railroad for Kids." Ducksters. Technological Solutions, Inc. (TSI), Apr. 2015. Web. 19 Apr. 2015.