ipl-logo

How Did The First Railroad Build A Railroad In The United States?

906 Words4 Pages

Sometimes when you are driving in your car, you drive over some railroad tracks. People nowadays always come across railroads tracks. Many of these tracks are abandoned and the only times you ever see a train is when you are in a city. Trains back then were very popular on carrying people or supplies, but today trains we barely use trains for those tasks. Today people do not care of trains and when you see a train, it will mostly have graffiti on it. People do not realize how important trains were back then, how many difficulties they went through to build these railroad tracks, or how they changed the United States. The railroads were very important of transportation back then. They were going to help people travel in days then months and …show more content…

This helped them transport the goods that found and it also helped to transport the miners there. The big one that happened during the old west is the California Gold Rush. Other places they discovered gold was in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, and some in Canadian Klondike.1 The railroads brought good things to the old west, but when they were building the tracks for it, they had many difficulties and hard times. During the making of the transcontinental railroad, which was the first railroad ever built, they had many difficulties that it took them around 5 years to finish it. Everything came by sea and there was a civil war going on during the first part of the construction of the railroad. Now building the railroad, they needed a lot of money and the only way they were going to get that money from the government was to build the first 40-mile track in the highest mountain in Sacramento. It required thousands of men to work on this track. This caused many deaths from cold and hunger. The workers were so starved to death that some resorted to cannibalism. The Chinese Workers worked the best and helped them break through the mountain after two years. Now they got millions of dollars of aid

Show More
Related
160 Words | 1 Pages

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.”

Read More
848 Words | 4 Pages

Even though the railroad existed before the great division between the north and the south and it mainly contributed in providing goods for both sides, the invention of the railroad greatly contributed to the civil war. The first railroad created in the US was in 1827 and their major role was to transport goods from the North to the South and back. As slaves became more abundant in the South and less present in the North a war began on the idea of slavery. The railroad caused this Civil War by bringing goods to only one side and keeping their advantage. It went from having different point of views to all out battles that started with starvation and isolation, but led to death and separation.

Read More
1017 Words | 5 Pages

During this time period there were great technological advancements. One of these advancements was railroads. Railroads were a positive change because it helped transport people and goods across the country. Businesses depended greatly upon transportation in order to transport their goods. Despite the positives of railroads, there were negatives.

Read More
1261 Words | 6 Pages

Have you ever wondered what it would be like without transportation? In the 1890’s the railroad system, the main source of transportation at that time, came to a halt after a strike called the Pullman Strike. A severe depression had hit the United States in 1893. This hit a railroad manufacturing company called the Pullman company hard.

Read More
1509 Words | 7 Pages

The company had trouble finding reliable labor, many men would use them for a free ride into the mountains and then would quit the project in hopes to find gold in the mountains. “Sometimes construction was sabotaged by Native Americans who were angry with the United Sates Government. The Native Americans lived on the land the railroad companies were now building through-land

Read More
891 Words | 4 Pages

In 1694, Thomas Savery invented what would revolutionize the united states indefinitely, he called it the steam engine. This invention lead to the first steam engine locomotive which many would say was a beneficial turning point in the industrialization of america’s economy,allowing the steam engine to be used on the railways. Although the railroads did impact the United States and certain groups in positive ways,there were also negative effects that occurred. During this time period, there were many chinese immigrants that entered the United States who made up most of the workers that built the tracks.

Read More
407 Words | 2 Pages

The greatest cultural conflict between the years 1865 and 1898 was the Transcontinental Railroad. The Transcontinental Railroad was a railway stretching from “sea to shining sea”. It was built by two teams of workers, the Central Pacific Railroad Company starting in Sacramento and the Union Pacific Railroad building west from the Missouri River. The teams worked day and night to connect the two ends in Promontory Summit, Utah. The Transcontinental Railroad was a major breakthrough in the connection of markets and the transportation of goods and people from coast to coast.

Read More
383 Words | 2 Pages

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.

Read More
1108 Words | 5 Pages

The Market Revolution generated a drastic change in the United States economy and altered gender barriers while at the same time accomplishing this in a provocative manner. This economic boom occurred around the first half of the 19th Century. The economic boom was achieved by inventions such as a transcontinental railroad system which resulted in a better transportation system which improved trade and the cotton gin which sped up the rate of removing seeds from cotton fiber. However like what the great Hugo said, “The brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over we realize this: that the human race has been roughly handled, but that it has advanced”.

Read More
774 Words | 4 Pages

The Transcontinental Railroad and the Interstate Highway System were not only the two biggest contributions in the history of transportation in the United States but are tremendously similar to each other in how they were built. Both systems were built in times of extremely desperate need of a way of transportation across the country which made them such big advantages to American society. The two systems have been majorly significant tools in the history the United States as well as modern day life. Something that the two topics share is the fact that they were both built during times of great change in the nation and had difficulties in funding.

Read More
889 Words | 4 Pages

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

Read More
558 Words | 3 Pages

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.

Read More
821 Words | 4 Pages

The Tremendous Impact of Railroads on America In the late 19th century, railroads propelled America into an era of unprecedented growth, prosperity, and convenient transportation. Prior to the building of the railroads, America lacked the proper and rapid transportation to make traveling across the country economical or practical. Lengthy travel was often cumbersome, costly, and dangerous.

Read More
2187 Words | 9 Pages

The Impact of the Underground Railroad in American History To begin, when the topic of American history is brought up, people do not tend to bring up slavery and how it has impacted our country by once splitting it into two. Instead they bring up how our country gives independence and freedom to its citizens. This was not always the case, though in 1619 the first slaves were brought to Virginia by the Dutch to help boost production of tobacco and other important crops. These African American people were kidnapped and made to join the impoverished European people of the colony in working for wealthy colonists. The agreement when slavery first began was that if you worked for seven years you would gain freedom along with your own plot of

Read More
307 Words | 2 Pages

The Effects of the Transcontinental Railroad: Native Americans, Society, and Economy The Transcontinental Railroad had a drastic effects on many aspects of life during the 1860s, including society, the economy, and the Native Americans’ way of life. These are just a few of the ways the Transcontinental Railroad changed the world. Native Americans were forced to relocate, society had a new outlook on life, and the economy had been boosted almost incalculably.

Read More

More about How Did The First Railroad Build A Railroad In The United States?

Related Topics

Open Document