Central Pacific Railroad Research Paper

In 1864 Congress approved the Northern Pacific Railway to be built. The NPR is the first transcontinental railroad in the northern part of the country. It is 8,316 miles long, beginning in Minnesota and ending in Washington state, with many branches going off the main line. When congress approved it they also supplied nearly 40million acres of land grants to build the railroad on. Construction didn 't go underway until 1870, and the rail road was finally christened to open on Sept. 8 1888.

A man named Judah devised the route for the Central Pacific and was later changed by a man named Daniel Strong, which chose a more effective route. Judah would have been the railroads engineer but was killed by the deadly Yellow Fever in Panama. Judah was on his way to meet the very successful man named Cornelius Vanderbilt. After Judah had passed, Samuel Montague and Lewis Clements became head engineers for the railroad. Unlike the Union Pacific, the Central Pacific hired Chinese immigrants who moved to California in search of gold.

Without the assistance of the U.S. government, railroad construction between 1860 and 1900 would have been greatly curtailed. Building railroads was very expensive and railroad companies could not build them without help, in the form of grants, from the U.S. government. Congress also helped out the railroad companies in the form of land grants.

There have been steam engine trains trailing the United States in the early 1800’s. Many of the early ones ran only a few dozen miles. When the railways ran longer distances, the cost to build and later ride them were be extremely high. However, long distances were what Minnesota needed to keep up with the competitive and growing nation around it. “Construction began on the first track in 1861 in St. Paul and was completed in 1862.”

Yet even though Union Pacific began with more government subsidizes, their more subtle business plan prevented them from accumulating wealth as quickly as Central Pacific, but allowed them to stay and business and eventually buy Central Pacific

The Transcontinental Railroad The completion of the first Transcontinental Railroad was an important event in the United States history. There were many challenges in building it, but after it was finished, it connected the East Coast of the United States to the West Coast. The railroad took three whole years to build, with the help of two railroad companies and thousands of other hired workers.

Central Pacific Railroad started from San Francisco, and used Chinese laborers for their work, pushing through the Sierra Nevada mountains. In 1867, to encourage quick progression, Congress deemed the land remaining between the two companies, which was the Utah plains, to be paid at mountain rate. This motivated the Union Pacific crew to lay 360 miles of track, and the Central Pacific crew to lay 425 miles of track within the year (Stockwell, 2011). Unfortunately, this hasty pace came at a cost.

The First Transcontinental Railroad, which united the east and west coasts, opened up a new frontier, enabling traversing the United

The Washington state railroads had a monumental impact on the development of Washington. The first Transcontinental Railroad, the Northern Pacific, was built, uniting the western half of America, including Washington State, with the eastern half. Radical thinkers such as Governor Stevens proposed a direct connection from the East to the untouched resources of the West. The United Sates government supported the railway lines by providing state grants. They gave the railroad millions of acres of land in the undeveloped West.

The Central Pacific Railroad Company was authorized by Congress in 1862. The establishment of America's transcontinental rail lines securely linked California to the rest of the country, and the

The influence railroads have in the society is undeniably very influential and it can be said that railroads companies immediately became the most powerful economic actors in the Pacific

With the advent of the railroad, many of these issues disappeared. Railroads had a major impact on advancing the American economy, transforming America into a modern society, and improving an antiquated transportation system. The building of railroads created rapid economic growth in America. Railroad companies employed more than one million workers to build and maintain railroads. At the same time, coal, timber, and steel industries employed thousands of workers to provide the supplies necessary to build railroads (Chapter 12 Industrialization).

In the 19th Century, there were strong supporters of the ideology of Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny was basically the belief of expansion by settlers expanding all over America because god supposedly destined the Americans for expansions by their resources. This resulted for the Americans to find a modern mode of transportation that would make traveling from the east to the west coast easier. This resulted in a mega construction known as the Transcontinental Railroad. The railroad not only helps with transportation but with trading.

In between California and the rest of the country were the Great Plains which were not heavily populated so there was no easy way of trade and transportation to the growing western territories. A group of men called the “Big Four” which consisted of Collis Huntington, Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker and Mark Hopkins, decided what the country needed was a transcontinental railroad. Their company, The Central Pacific Railroad company would hire 15,000 Chinese men to work on constructing the railroad due to the fact that they would work for less than the average American. This made transportation cheaper and quicker than ever

The building of roads, canals and railroads played a large role in the United States during the 1800s. They served the purpose of connecting towns and settlements so that goods could be transported quickly and more efficiently. These goods could be transported fast, cheap and in safe way through the Erie Canal that was built to connect the Great Lakes to New York. Railroads were important during Civil War as well, because it helped in the transportation of goods, supplies and weapons when necessary. These new forms of transportation shaped the United States into the place that it is today.