A Disaster for Native Americans Not everyone would benefit from that transformation. The transcontinental railroad was not the beginning of white settlers' battles with Native Americans. Nor was it the final nail in the coffin. But it was an irrevocable marker of encroaching white society, that unstoppable force which would force Indians onto reservations within decades. By , even the Powder River Valley — the rich hunting ground so hard won by red Cloud and the Oglala Sioux — would be lost.
New treaties scattered the Indians to reservations and opened the last great Native American holding to the settlers so steadily branching outward from the iron road.
And the buffalo herds upon which Indians depended had been nearly depleted. They were easy prey to sport-hunters brought to the plains by the carload. More disastrously, the railroad introduced the herds to American industrial production, for which they became one more resource to be mined en masse.
Millions of buffalo fell to indiscriminate slaughter, their hides shipped back along the rails to the markets of the East. A Web of Rails The transcontinental railroad did not long remain the sole venue of travel through America's center. Lines spiderwebbed outward from its branch points, conveying north and south the settlers coming west to consume millions of acres of land.
By a number of routes ran parallel — the Northern Pacific and Southern Pacific among them — reaching westward from Mississippi to the Pacific just like the pioneering road.
Discover the fascinating story of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, the groundbreaking cryptanalyst who helped bring down gangsters and break up a Nazi spy ring in South America.
Her work helped lay the foundation for modern codebreaking today. I n the summer of , hundreds of wildfires raged across the Northern Rockies. By the time it was all over, more than three million acres had burned and at least 78 firefighters were dead. It was the largest fire in American history. Photo by Andrew J. Russell, date unknown. East and West shaking hands at the laying of the last rail. Taken at the ceremony at Promontory Summit, Utah on May 10, Russell, Through to the Pacific.
Cape Horn Train. Photographer unknown, circa Courtesy of the California State Library. Photo by Carol M. Highsmith, Highsmith, date unknown. In the early nineteenth century, traveling from the East to the West Coast was a four- to six-month journey, and safe passage was far from guaranteed.
The land routes took travelers through deserts, across plains and rivers, and over mountains. The construction of the Transcontinental Railroad would drastically change that, directly connecting the coasts, making travel cheaper, quicker, and safer and opening the door for massive economic expansion across the country.
By the mid-nineteenth century, most everyone in Washington agreed that America needed a railroad to connect the coasts. By , five separate railroad resolutions went before Congress, each proposing a distinct route, most of them snaking through the lower passes on the northern side of Rocky Mountains, headed towards San Francisco or Vancouver, or traveling south towards San Diego, avoiding the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada altogether.
In , Judah published and distributed copies of a pamphlet laying out his vision and his research. A Practical Plan for Building the Pacific Railroad drummed up significant interest in Washington and drew more financial backers to his cause. Still, many thought his route was preposterous. Though more direct, it would be much more difficult to build. But soon after the Civil War broke out, Judah headed back to Washington to lobby once again.
Only now, with the Southern legislators removed from the voting pool, Judah had much less opposition. The original golden spike is now part of the collection of Stanford University, which was founded by Leland Stanford and his wife, Jane, in in memory of their only son. The building of the transcontinental railroad opened up the American West to more rapid development. With the completion of the track, the travel time for making the 3,mile journey across the United States was cut from a matter of months to under a week.
Connecting the two American coasts made the economic export of Western resources to Eastern markets easier than ever before.
The railroad also facilitated westward expansion , escalating conflicts between Native American tribes and settlers who now had easier access to new territories.
But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. There was a time when traveling from the East Coast to the West Coast meant riding for months in a horse-drawn wagon or stagecoach, or sailing southward to Panama and then crossing the Isthmus to board another ship for a journey up the other coast.
But that all changed on May 10, Construction on the Transcontinental Railroad began on January 8, in Sacramento, when workers for the Central Pacific Railroad first broke ground for the track.
Eleven months later, their counterparts in the Midwest—workers for the Union Pacific Railroad—began breaking Velvet cushions and gilt-framed mirrors. Feasts of antelope, trout, berries and Champagne.
In , a New York Times reporter experienced the ultimate in luxury—and he did so not in the parlor of a Gilded Age magnate, but on a train headed from Omaha, Nebraska to San Francisco, They toiled through back-breaking labor during both frigid winters and blazing summers.
Hundreds died from explosions, landslides, accidents and disease. And even though they made major contributions to the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad, these 15, to 20, The Underground Railroad was a network of people, African American as well as white, offering shelter and aid to escaped enslaved people from the South. It developed as a convergence of several different clandestine efforts.
The exact dates of its existence are not known, but it They sold or gave shares in this Liverpool and Manchester Railway The opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in September marked the dawn of steam-powered rail travel. Prior to its construction, most railways were horse-drawn and used to haul freight such as coal over short distances. Today many Americans see Labor Day as time off from work, an opportunity to enjoy a barbecue with friends and family and a final moment of summertime relaxation before the busy fall season begins.
But the history behind the Labor Day holiday is far more complex and dramatic than
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