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N0KFQ > TODAY 10.05.17 14:03l 71 Lines 3464 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 31998_N0KFQ
Read: GUEST
Subj: Today in History - May 10
Path: IW8PGT<IR2UBX<IZ3LSV<I0OJJ<N6RME<N0KFQ
Sent: 170510/1200Z 31998@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA BPQ6.0.13
1869
First transcontinental railroad is completed
At Promontory, Utah, California Governor Leland Stanford pounds
in a ceremonial golden spike that completes the nation's first
transcontinental railway. After failing to hit the spike on his
first attempt, Stanford raised the heavy sledgehammer again and
struck a solid square blow. For the first time in American
history, railways linked together east and west, the realization
of a dream that began two decades earlier.
Americans had been enthusiastic railroaders long before the
transcontinental line was built. In 1850, more than 9,000 miles
of track covered the United States. By 1860, the number had risen
to over 30,000 miles, more miles of rail than the rest of the
world altogether. Initially, most of the construction had been in
the nation's growing industrial centers in the Northeast, but by
1860, railways were rapidly expanding into the upper Midwest.
Congress began considering how best to support the building of a
transcontinental line in the late 1840s. The discovery of gold in
California in 1848 made the issue all the more urgent: only a
transcontinental railway could effectively tie that far-off
region to the rest of the nation. Northern and southern
politicians, however, disagreed over where the line should be
constructed, and the project stalled for more than a decade.
The outbreak of the Civil War finally broke the stalemate.
Unencumbered by southern objections, northern legislatures
approved a central route from Omaha, Nebraska, to Sacramento,
California. More importantly, in 1862 and 1864 Congress passed
acts that gave huge cash subsidies and land grants to private
companies that agreed to build the tracks across the continent.
Recognizing a moneymaking opportunity, two companies took up the
challenge. The California-based Central Pacific began laying
tracks eastward from Sacramento. The eastern-based Union Pacific
began in Omaha and built west. The laborers working for the
Central Pacific faced the greater challenge - building across the
rugged Sierra Nevada Mountains. As a result, their progress was
naturally slower than that of the work force of the Union
Pacific, who managed to average a mile a day over mostly flat
terrain. The Central Pacific crew was primarily Chinese
immigrants, while Irish immigrants dominated the Union Pacific.
Toward the end of the project, the two sides engaged in a bitter
rivalry that at times took on unpleasant racist overtones. Both
groups, however, labored heroically in difficult and frequently
dangerous conditions, often working as long as 15 hours each day.
When the two lines connected at Promontory in northern Utah, it
was the beginning of a dramatic transformation of the West. A
3,000-mile journey that had previously taken months to complete
could now take only days by rail. More importantly, the abundant
resources of the West could be shipped quickly and profitably to
insatiable eastern markets, greatly spurring the development of
the western economy. In years to come, thousands of emigrants
rode the rails westward to homestead land, encroaching on Native
American territories and hastening the demise of their way of
life. Perhaps more than any other single event, the completion of
the transcontinental railroad enabled the American conquest and
settlement of the West.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
Winlink: n0kfq@winlink.org
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