Before the railroad was constructed, the situation of transportation was inconvenient. People could only travel by foot, boat, or horse. Meanwhile, taking goods from one place to another used a horse-drawn wagon or stagecoach. Americans wasted a lot of time on the journey. People needed a better way to travel.
Americans began to expand toward the west. There were two main reasons for the Westward Expansion. Firstly, it was for population pressure. In the late 1800s, many people from other countries left their houses and immigrated to the United States. As the immigrating population increased, the Eastern cities and states, from Atlanta, Georgia, to Boston, Massachusetts, were filling up. In the West, there was a vast amount of land that could be obtained cheaply, so many people were forced to travel West. Secondly, it was because of personal economic gain. Because of people’s population, in many Eastern cities, it was hard for workers to find jobs. In the West, people can get opportunities to work in the cattle industry, to be a ‘cowboy’. The California gold rush in1849 gave many people dreams of becoming rich, so they decided to travel there and try to find gold and get rich.Westward Expansion was a very necessary thing for the USA.
In order to make the travel from East to West easier, American people built the first transcontinental railroad. The transcontinental railroad was built across North America in the 1860s, linking the railway network of the Eastern United States with California on the Pacific coast. It was completed on May 10, 1869, at the famous ‘golden spike’ event at Promontory Summit, Utah. About 21,000 workers who were from Irish-American Civil War veterans, freed slaves, Mormon pioneers and Chinese laborers to do the hard and dangerous work of laying 1,776 miles of track. This project cost roughly $60 million. People could give goods like wheat, corn and meat to people in the East on this first transcontinental railroad.
The transcontinental railroad had many benefits. Firstly, it was faster and saved a lot of time. The rail connection made it possible to travel in a train car from New York to San Francisco in a week’s time. Secondly, it made travel more inexpensive.In the 1860s, a six-month stagecoach trip across the U.S. cost $1,000 (about $20,000 in today’s dollars). But once the railroad was built, the cost of a coast-to-coast trip was 85% less expensive. That made it possible for Americans to travel to the place they wanted to go. Thirdly, it made commerce possible on a vast scale. By 1880, the transcontinental railroad was transporting $50 million worth of freight each year. Western food crops and raw materials were transported to the East, and Eastern manufactured goods were transported to the West. That railroad made the US feel more united.
In conclusion, railway construction plays an important role in the USA. It connected West and East of America, affected people’s lives, made traffic more convenient, and made trading more frequent. Now, the railroad network of the United States is the biggest in the world. The railway united the whole USA.
Comments