The Transcontinental Railroad

The Transcontinental Railroad
Madison Norment

   In 1862 Abraham Lincoln signed the Pacific Railway Act. It was made up of two corporations who were offered land for their businesses by the government. They were the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific.

   The Union Pacific pushed westward from the Omaha, Nebraska in 1865. Laborers went through blizzards in the mountains, bad heat in the deserts, and they ran into angry Native’s. Civil War veterans, Irish immigrants, miner, farmers, cooks, adventurers, and some ex-convicts were the people that worked. With the 10,000 workers who endured hard camp life they had laid 1,086 miles of railway.

   The Central Pacific started in California in 1863 and continued into Nevada and Utah. They had to make a tunnel that went through the Sierra Mountains and a little bit of the Rocky Mountains. 10,000 people from China had been hired to do this work. They had all the equipment they used shipped from the eastern part of the United States. All together they laid down 688 miles.

   All the railroads had been finished in just four years. Each mile of track had need 400 nails, and each rail took 10 spikes. Many people came to watch the final spikes being put in where the corporations had chosen to meet at Promontory Summit. A telegram had been sent telling people the great new. Many of the people celebrated the finishing of the railway that day.