transcontinental railroad

transcontinental railroad, first railroad to connect the East and West coasts of the United States, linking established rail lines in the eastern part of the country and the Midwest to the western territories. The transcontinental railroad reduced the time it took to travel to the western states from six months to just two weeks. Construction began in 1863. The Union Pacific Railroad Company built west from Nebraska, and the Central Pacific Railroad built east from California. The two companies met at Promontory Summit in Promontory, Utah, where a ceremony marking the completion of the railroad was held on May 10, 1869. In total the track spanned about 1,912 miles (3,077 km).

Initial proposal and surveys

The first public proposal for a transcontinental railway line was made by New York City merchant Asa Whitney in 1844. At that time the United States did not possess land west of the Rocky Mountains, though with Britain it jointly occupied the Oregon Country (a region roughly comparable to today’s Pacific Northwest) until 1846, when the United States gained control of the Pacific Coast between the 42nd and 49th parallels.

Whitney had proposed a line from the head of the Great Lakes at Duluth, Minnesota, to the Oregon Country. The Mexican-American War (1846–48) greatly complicated the matter, as much of the territory the United States gained continued to be sites of dispute and negotiation. (This included what would later become the states of California, Utah, Nevada, and New Mexico, most of Arizona and Colorado, and some of Oklahoma, Wyoming, and Kansas.) North-South sectionalism also led to some roadblocks, as Southerners, unlike their Northern counterparts, primarily invested in enslaved workers rather than factories or railway infrastructure. In the hope of resolving the regional conflict, the U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers was authorized in 1853 to undertake the Pacific Railroad Survey, which studied nearly all the potential rail routes in the West. The survey was only partially completed but roughly sketched routes along the 41st and 38th parallels, among others. The 42nd parallel was ultimately chosen as the main reference for the new railway. In order to complete the project, the Union Pacific company would build east of Great Salt Lake and the Central Pacific company would build west.

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Construction and expansion

The Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 initially selected the 32nd parallel as the site of the transcontinental railroad. But because of the Civil War, relatively little was accomplished on the Union Pacific Railroad before the fighting ended in 1865. California was little affected by the war, and the Central Pacific Railroad’s construction there advanced more rapidly. In their haste to accumulate the most miles, the two companies built past each other, and the meeting point had to be renegotiated. The joining of the two lines took place on May 10, 1869, at Promontory Summit in Utah.

Finding workers to lay the tracks proved difficult, as working conditions were bleak and unforgiving. The Central Pacific line’s contract owner, Charles Crocker, tried to hire freed African Americans and even Confederate war prisoners, but both plans were unsuccessful. He eventually suggested using Chinese laborers, but Central Pacific construction foreman James Strobridge felt that they were too slight in stature for the job. Strobridge eventually conceded, however, after observing that the Chinese crews were determined and hardy. Many workers went so far as to live in the tunnels they had blasted and would resume work in the morning without ever leaving the work site. Although the Chinese workers, who comprised about 90 percent of the total workforce by the end of the project, were praised upon the railroad’s completion, their accomplishments were soon largely forgotten.

Many viewed the transcontinental railroad as a beacon of Manifest Destiny and modernization, but the railroad presented a threat to Indigenous Native American communities. American studies scholar Manu Karuka told the Smithsonian Institution in 2019 that the expansion “facilitated the colonization of western territories by encouraging new settlements on Indigenous lands.” Workers faced frequent assaults from members of the Cheyenne and Sioux tribes while building the tracks. Teams often stood guard while others worked, reducing productivity. To forestall such attacks, Central Pacific offered employment to some Native Americans, such as the Paiute and Shoshone tribes. The new workers joined the Chinese crews to lay tracks.

The opening of the Pacific Railroad in 1869 demonstrated that the market for the profitable operation of such a line still lay in the future: One eastbound and one westbound train a week were enough to meet demand. It took almost a generation before additional rail lines to the West Coast were justified. In 1885 the Santa Fe reached the Los Angeles basin and the Northern Pacific Railway reached Puget Sound.

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In place of the natural territory gained through monopoly, the western rail lines tried to accomplish regional ubiquity, under which the Southern Pacific (originally the Central Pacific), the Union Pacific, and the Santa Fe all attempted to have a network of rail lines that reached the Pacific Southwest, the Pacific Northwest, and northern California. Only the Union Pacific succeeded. The American rail network, which spanned the country, was essentially complete by 1910, when the last transcontinental line, the Western Pacific Railroad to Oakland, California, was opened.