Pacific Railroad Dbq

1103 Words5 Pages

Throughout the Civil War, as well as the 1860’s as a whole, it was evident that United States was sparsely growing, in industrial goods, the production of agriculture, and the spread of settlements. At this time, the United State’s population was more than double than its previous period. At this time the United states population was Approximately 31,443,321 million citizens (Joseph C. G. Kennedy, The Eight Census; 1864). In this time period we see most of the United State’s economical growth coming from the Midwest as well as the Northeast. As for the South, they remained rather agricultural, due to the desire of one of the biggest crops to ever support the United States, Cotton. Due to the discovery of gold in California, all of the United States turned to the west, in search of wealth. Few knew it, but a railway would be needed to transport the gold from the west to the east. One man, the secretary of war, Jefferson Davis, who also in the further became the president of the secretary, realized the importance of a railroad that would connect the east and the west. Because of this realization, Mr. Davis sent out survey parties to look for railway routes to connect the east and west from the Missouri river to the Pacific Coast. Due to the survey parties, 5 routes were found possible: One northern, three central and one southern. …show more content…

This started in Sacramento and continued to build east. Congress, however, had one plan in mind; to build the railways as fast as possible. First, with each mile of track that was completed, they gave twenty alternate sections of land, to build the next mile. Second, congress would give loans: $16,000 was given to produce each mile of track on flat prairie land, $32,000 per mile if the track was produced on hilly terrain, and $48,000 per mile in the

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