Transcontinental Railroad Research Paper

Your about to take a trip to California and you have some options. You either have to travel on a six-month trip on boat or a week trip on train. Take a longer trip risking malaria and other tropical diseases or a shorter trip in a cabin usually disease free. You might think I’m crazy, but this was how much the Transcontinental Railroad saved risk and money during the 19th century. Once the Transcontinental Railroad was completed this was the ultimate way across the country, and killed the idea of a Northwest Passage. During the 19th century, many people in the United States started believing in Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny is the belief that Americans had the right to spread across the continent. We achieved this feat by buying the
Railroads were so important in the United States that by 1900, there was more miles of rail than in Europe and Russia combined (America, 575). Having a transcontinental railroad meant that the importance of the common railroad was carried throughout the country. Railroads helped businesses grow by linking them to resources, factories, and more markets, railroads employed thousands of workers, and railroads opened up growth and settlement in places that weren’t able to be reached by carriage. Best of all, railroads were fast and could ship huge amounts of goods more cheaply (Moser, 2013). Before the building of the Transcontinental Railroad, it cost nearly one thousand dollars to travel across the country. After the railroad was completed, the price dropped to one hundred fifty dollars
Not only was this rail a positive influence, it was the biggest influence of the time period. This rail connected the east to the west; no other rail could do that. Although this rail was enormously popular in the beginning, the legacy of the Transcontinental Railroad has dimmed over the years. Although many trains are still used in other countries, the main option for land transportation is car. Airplanes have also trumped trains, but if a heavy load is needed most still depend on train. The transcontinental railroad is not in use today because most old railroads got ripped apart for the war effort. The transcontinental railroad deservers iconic status because without the transcontinental railroad people in the 1800s would still be hauling all these things in a carriage, and most of the cities would be considered “bad places to start a city” on carriage wouldn’t have been created. Back in this time period there were cars, but these cars weren’t nearly as fast as a train, and needed constant repair. So which one would you pick, more difficult, risky, and sketchy one thousand dollar route on boat or carriage or the easier more relaxed one hundred fifty dollar route on train?

Works Cited
American Nation. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, 2003. 549
575. Print
Gould, L. Lewis. “Credit Mobilier of America.” Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia.