The Railroad Boom

The Railroad Boom

The main reason for the transcontinental railroads to be built was to bring the east and west together. The building of these railroads caused huge economic growth throughout the United States. The railroad created opportunities for everyone across the US.

“Railroads were the first big business, the first magnet for the great financial markets, and the first industry to develop a large-scale management bureaucracy. The railroads opened the western half of the nation to economic development, connected raw materials to factories and retailers, and in so doing created an interconnected national market. At the same time the railroads were themselves gigantic consumers of iron, steel, lumber, and other capital goods”. (Tindall, Shi)

The undertaking of a project as large as building a railroad across the expanse of the United States seemed impossible and way too expensive for any railway companies to undertake; therefore, in the early/mid 1800’s, railway companies and business people began approaching legislators in an attempt to convince them to support railroad expansion. This, combined with economic necessity, helped to pass the first of several land grant bills. The bills entailed the gifting of public land to railroad companies in exchange for railroad track being laid in designated areas. The land that was not used for track was then sold. Both railroad companies and the government gained from this. The land where track was laid also became more valuable and the profit that was made from the sale of the land was used to pay for materials and labor to continue the railroad expansion. (Railroad Land Grants).

With the East and the West being brought together by the railroad, goods were able to go to market more cheaply, federal shipping costs were reduced, more jobs became available due to railroad construction and due to the new settlements that were developing along the new railroad routes. (Railroad Land Grants)

The building of the railroads:

During the 1870’s, railroad construction in the United States grew dramatically. Prior to 1871 only 45,000 miles of track had been laid. Between 1871 and 1900, another 170,000 miles were added on to the United States increasing railroad system. A large portion of the growth can be attributed to the building of the transcontinental railroads. In 1862, Congress passed the Pacific Railway Act, which authorized the Union Pacific Railway Company and Central Pacific to complete a railroad all the way to the Pacific Ocean. One company started on the West Coast and the other one started on the East Coast. The first transcontinental railroad was completed on May 19, 1869. Both lines of the railroad met at Promontory Point Utah where a ceremonial “golden spike” was driven with a silver-plated hammer to commemorate the event. Soon after the completion of the first transcontinental railroad, land grants were no longer public policy due to the fact that many people began questioning giving away so much land to private companies. Between 1850 and 1870, over 129 million acres had been granted to about 80 railroad companies. The value of this was more than half a billion dollars. Due to the land give-away, many fortunes were made. Some were made from sales of land that was left over because it was not used for the railroad and some of the fortunes were made by railroad companies in their role as builders. By 1900, four additional transcontinental railroads connected the eastern states with the Pacific Coast. (Rise of Industrial America)

Four of the five transcontinental railroads were built with assistance from the federal government through land grants. The railroads received millions of acres of public lands from congress and were assured land on which to lay the tracks. Not all railroads were built with government assistance though. Smaller railroad companies had to purchase land from private owners on which to lay their tracks. Some private owners objected to the railroads and refused to grant rights of way.

Life for railroad construction crews was difficult. Crews were subjected to not only extreme weather conditions, but they had to lay tracks across and through many “national geographic features”(Rise of Industrial America) such as, rivers, canyons, mountains, and desert. Also, life in the camps was often very crude and rough. Many laborers died on the job. Due to the large economic opportunity, railroads construction camps attracted all types of people looking to turn a quick profit, legally or illegally. The Union Pacific work crews were comprised of ex-soldiers, former slaves, and Irish-German immigrants. The Central Pacific crews were composed mostly of Chinese workers who were lured to America by the California gold