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Pacific Railroad Acts
The 1862 Act authorized extensive land grants[3] in the Western United States and the issuance of 30-year government bonds (at 6 percent) to the Union Pacific Railroad and Central Pacific Railroad companies. -
Period: to
Building of the railroad
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Chinese workers
The compaines decide to employ chinese immigrants to save money on labor cost -
First rail laid
The first Union Pacific rails are laid in Omaha, Nebraska. -
Hell on Wheels
used to describe the itinerant collection of flimsily assembled gambling houses, dance halls, saloons, and brothels that followed the army of Union Pacific railroad workers -
The World Grew Smaller
The east coast and the west coast were finally connected. The industrialism in the east and the wilds in the west. -
A Competing Canal
Egypt's Suez Canal linked Asia and India to Europe by a single waterway, ensuring that trade between the two regions would continue to circumvent American soil. -
Surging Interstate Trade
Just as it opened the markets of the west coast and Asia to the east, it brought products of eastern industry to the growing populace in the west. -
Improved Public Discourse
The rails carried more than goods; they provided a conduit for ideas, a pathway for discourse. "Conversations begun in the east ended in the west." -
A Disaster for Native Americans
Not everyone would benefit from the railroad. The transcontinental railroad was not the beginning of white settlers' battles with Native Americans, and it wasn't the last. -
A Web of Rails
The transcontinental railroad did not long remain the sole venue of travel through America's center. Lines spider webbed outward from its branch points, conveying north and south
