THE TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD

• In today’s world, travel by train is no longer a major mode of transportation. However, there was a time in our nation’s history when the   train was the biggest advancement in transportation technology. Up until that point, people had to rely on their own two feet, or on the strength of animals such as oxen and horses, when they wanted to travel any distance.

• We are accustomed to the fast-moving pace of our society. In our country’s early years, however, progress moved at a much slower rate. It was not an easy task to build a railroad. Lots of workers were required to lay the tracks, and the conditions were often very dangerous. To help clear rocks and mountains, unstable nitro-glycerine explosives were used. The glass containers of liquid had to be kept absolutely still to prevent them from exploding at the wrong time.  Often, the job of handling the crate filled with the hazardous fluid was given to a Chinese immigrant. Many Chinese who came to California seeking their fortunes during the Gold Rush of 1849 stayed behind to work on the railroad.  Unfortunately, thousands died during its construction.

• Theodore Judah was the engineer who dreamed of making a transcontinental railroad come to life in the 1850’s. There were already railroads operating in cities on the east coast, and Judah was in the process of constructing railroads in the west, but there was no service at all across the  empty middle spaces of our nation. Judah was determined to change all that. He recruited some investors: Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, Charles Crocker, and Collis Huntington, who were nicknamed “the Big Four”, provided the money to create the Central Pacific Railroad Company. Construction on the transcontinental railroad began in 1863.

• Thousands of railway workers laid tracks from both the west and the east at the same time. It was dangerous and difficult work. The two sections of track were finally able to be joined on May 10, 1969 in Promontory, Utah.  Its completion signaled the beginning of mass travel of both communication and people between the east and west coasts. For the first time, the country felt truly united.

Name:__________________________________

 Answer the following questions based on the reading passage. Don’t forget to go back to the passage whenever necessary to find or confirm your answers.

1) Why did the expansion of the railroad system have such an impact on the nation?  

2) What do you think motivated the Big Four to invest in the construction of the transcontinental railroad?

3) Why do you suppose the company continued railroad construction in spite of the fact that so many people were killed or injured?

4) How did the ability to move people and ideas quickly from one side of the country to the other change the United States?

5) What impact do you think the Gold Rush had on the transcontinental railroad?