The Transcontinental Railroad

Throughout the nineteenth century Congress debated whether the federal government should fund “internal improvements” such as canals and railroads. In the 1850s it commissioned surveys of possible routes to the Pacific, but private companies would not undertake the project without federal help, and sectional rivalry over the route stalled action.

In 1862, during the Civil War, Congress passed the Pacific Railway Act. It provided government bonds and large grants of public land to the Union Pacific and Central Pacific to build a railroad and telegraph line from the Missouri River to the Pacific, and secured the line’s use to the government.

Beginning in 1863, the Union Pacific built west from Omaha with crews made up largely of Irish, German, and Italian immigrants, while the Central Pacific built east from Sacramento across the Sierra Nevada with a workforce that included more than 10,000 Chinese laborers. Both companies faced severe weather, punishing terrain, and conflict with Native nations whose lands the tracks crossed. On May 10, 1869, the last rails were laid and a ceremonial last spike driven at Promontory, Utah.

Travel time across the country fell from months to about a week. Goods, people, and mail moved quickly between coasts, and the railroad opened Western lands to farming, ranching, and mining. President Grant, a strong supporter, oversaw its completion in his first year in office.

Railroads became the nation’s first big businesses; by 1900 the country had some 190,000 miles of track, including several transcontinental lines, and railroad finance, labor conflict, and political influence defined the Gilded Age. The rails also carried settlers, soldiers, and hide hunters onto the Plains. The bison herds on which Plains nations depended collapsed — from over ten million at midcentury to a few hundred by the early 1880s — and Native nations were confined to reservations. Chinese workers who helped build the line soon faced exclusion.