Chapter 1 BUILDING THE TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD When the 19th century began the United States had only 17 states and one large territory The country’s western border was the Mississippi River But by the end of 1803 President Thomas Jefferson had bought the vast and unknown land called Louisiana from France Stretching from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains it included 828,000 square miles 2,144,510 square kilometers of unknown land Before the railroad was built explorers and traders headed west in carts pulled by livestock 4
In the 1840s families began to head west in covered wagons drawn by mules or oxen The journey by wagon took four months or more Many people and animals died on this difficult journey By the 1850s stagecoaches pulled by fast horses began to carry mail and passengers from the Missouri River to the West Coast in less than three weeks But nothing could carry heavy loads such as timber coal steel or livestock better than a train RAILROAD FEVER In 1829 an engineer named Horatio Allen brought one of the new Iron Horses from England and tested it on a 3-mile 4 8 kilometer section of track at a Pennsylvania coal mine Within a few years railroad fever had swept the country By 1840 the East Coast had nearly 3,000 miles 4,800 kilometers of track more than in all of Europe In February 1854 railroads reached the Mississippi River And 10 years later there were 33,860 miles 54,200 kilometers of completed railway in the United States with 16,000 more miles 25,745 kilometers under construction Horatio Allen 1802 1889 5
As early as 1830 politicians and others had talked about ways to build a transcontinental railroad linking the Atlantic and Pacific coasts But many problems had to be solved first Just getting supplies including tons of timber and steel to the point of construction would be very expensive Much of the land the tracks would cross had few people aside from nomadic groups of Native Americans who followed the buffalo They could be expected to strongly resist any railroad across their lands They knew it could bring thousands of people and the eventual loss of their way of life and their land It would cost millions of dollars to find good workers to build the railroad feed them during the 6 to 10 year project and protect them and the railroad from attacks A steam-powered engine PUFFING BILLY From England came reports of steam propelled engines that were replacing horses An engine called Puffing Billy announced in 1813 could haul 10 coal wagons at 5 miles 8 kilometers an hour And in 1829 The Rocket was invented the first true Iron Horse It traveled an amazing 29 miles 47 kilometers an hour 6
An aerial view of the southern Sierra Nevada Mountains shows the high mountains deep canyons and snow that created many challenges for construction crews Planners knew it would be a dangerous task to build a railroad to the West Coast Construction crews would have to cross high mountains thick forests burning deserts and deep canyons The most dreaded obstacle was the Sierra Nevada a mountain range that divides California from the rest of the country The granite mountains rise 4,000 to 7,000 feet 1,200 to 2,135 meters with 12 peaks higher than 14,000 feet 4,270 meters The mountain summits were covered with ice much of the year and snow drifted as deep as 60 feet 18 meters in winter Explorers and pioneers had frozen to death trying to cross those mountains 7
