Power Of The Road In The American West Summary

One Chinese worker was said to die for every mile of track laid down. The amount of Chinese workers killed in accidents equals at least fifty. These hardships caused by the railroad involved discrimination and unfair treatment towards the Chinese. However, Chinese immigrants aren’t the only railroad workers treated unfairly. Both the workers on the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific had to deal with harsh conditions

The railroad industry began to struggle when John D. Rockefeller built a pipeline to transport oil instead of the railroads causing many people to lose their jobs. As a result they rioted at Tom Scotts Pennsylvania railroad burning all his buildings trashing his livelihood. Andrew Carnegie felt this drove his mentor to his grave despite Scotts age.

in the 1800s was the expansion of the west. Since the start of ideas like Manifest Destiny, it has always been a common belief that transportation was the best way to stay connected to the rest of the country. At first roads were used for this job, with one of the most famous being the National Road which connected the Potomac and Ohio Rivers and was a total length of 620 miles. After

The transcontinental railroad was starting to be built in 1863 by two main companies, the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific. In the 1800’s the railroad was seen as one of the best things and also one of the worst things that took place in the US. The railroad brought many negative effects westward for the Native Americans and Chinese, but had many positive effects for Americans in the US. Some of these positive and negatives came from events like The Great Plains, Buffalo, Manifest Destiny, and Railroad Surveyors. This essay will focus on how railroad expanding westward created more positive opportunities for the Americans to start up new lives for themselves. But it will also focus on how the Americans and the railroad expanding westward took over the Natives Americans lives and left them with little to no land to survive with. Many other obstacles and situation also came along with the Americans as they tried to build up the railroad for the people of the US.

During the time of construction, the First Transcontinental Railroad not only unified America, but unified the world through the lens of American Exceptionalism. Subsequently, American Exceptionalism is the idea that the United States is unique among all other nations of the world through the idea of democracy and liberty. The construction of the First Transcontinental Railroad brought workers from all over the globe, uniting them in order to achieve a common goal: transforming the world. Out of the 10,000 total workers constructing the First Transcontinental Railroad, nearly two-thirds of them were Chinese, and many more were Irish. This idea of American Exceptionalism and the idea of prosperity in the United States is one of the main reasons that the First Transcontinental Railroad brought many immigrants from around the world to the United States during the mid 1800s. Conclusively, the idea of being unique among other nations through freedom, liberty, and democracy is what drove immigrants to come to the United States in order to

Construction of the Transcontinental Railroad not only affected the United States itself but also anything that inhabited the lands that it was constructed on. As a necessary to build the railroad they had to go through mountains, Native American land, animals homes, etc. Native Americans being inhabitants of the land did not welcome the white settlers which resulted in violent conflict. When it came to building the railroad two companies were assigned the task, pinning them up against each other to lay the most track for more money. The Central Pacific company which started in California had to go through mountains while the Union Pacific which started in Nebraska only had to go through the Great Plains. For Central Pacific workers there was horrible working conditions, discrimination, and the chance dying for every mile laid.

Trains can offer an efficient way to transport goods over very long distances, it's not a surprising fact in the 1850’s T’was a time of westward expansions for the united states, as the gold rush’s of both california and nevada pushed Americans further right into the heart of the west to have them prosper into a super power.

Have you ever seen a railroad? Well, there was a time when railroads were desperately needed. This was the time of the Transcontinental Railroad. In my paper I will explain the purpose of the railroad, challenges the workers faced, and the results of the finished railroad.

The Great Railroad strike of 1877 led to many problems this strike, also referred to as the Great Upheaval, which began in July in a town named Martinsburg, West Virginia, the railroad strike ended forty-five days after locals, state militias and federal troops shut it down. The goals of the railroad strike were for a wage increase. The workers of the railroad were not represented by labor unions, which mad the workers angry therefore several cities started to build armories to support their militias to avoid any problems. There were many causes of the strike, one was that the civil war ended and a boom in railroad construction ensued about 55,000 of new tracks being laid between the years 1866 and 1873. In 1873, the Wake of the panic developed between workers and leaders. As immigration from Europe was underway, the railroad jobs were increasing and it became a competition, which enables companies to drive down the wages and lay off their workers. Speculators fed large amounts of money into the railroad industry causing an abnormal growth (en.wikipedia.org).

“If any act symbolized the taming of the Northwest frontier, it was the driving of the final spike to complete the nation’s first transcontinental railroad.”1 The first railroad west of the Mississippi River was opened on December 23, 1852. Five miles long, the track ran from St. Louis to Cheltanham, Missouri. Twenty-five years prior, there were no railroads in the United States; twenty-five years later, railroads joined the east and west coasts from New York to San Francisco.2

The transcontinental railroad appeared like a golden route to a prosperous future, but the struggles of many peoples, cultures, and the downturn of the economy, show that the negative effects of the transcontinental railroad outweighed the benefits. Theodore Judah, and the Big Four, comprised of the Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker, decided to build the railroad by laying down the tracks. The founders did not realize the consequences of constructing this massive iron horse: the inhumane treatment of workers, the destruction of a culture, and the collapse of the economy in 1873. The people on the railroad faced the prejudices, inclement weather, and cruel actions because of the harshness shown by the Superintendent of Construction of the Central Pacific Railroad. Cruelty did not stop with the construction workers, but rather it spread to the innocent Native Americans. Armed forces killed Native Americans and food supplies off of ancestral land to build the transcontinental railroad. Although acts, such as the Pacific

The Transcontinental Railroad was one of the most ambitious engineering projects, economic stimulants, and efficient methods of transportation in the early United States. If completed, the United States would be truly be united from east to west. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the Transcontinental Railroad helped develop new opportunities for many aspects of American life.

When the Gold Rush ended in 1860, many Chinese immigrants found jobs with the nations railroad industry. When the Union Pacific Railroad began its construction of its western part in 1864, thousands of Chinese laborers were hired. It was the Chinese who the Central Pacific Railroad Company hired to build a railroad over the harsh western land that would eventually link America's east and west coasts together. The Chinese were extremely hard workers, conquering the granite mountains and gorges of the Sierra Nevada and Rockies. They also encountered dangerous working conditions, such as being lowered from mere rope held baskets, suspended between earth and sky, and sustaining the harsh winter of 1865-1865, which was recorded as one of the worst winters. The Chinese were meager in their way of life, dressing poorly and having simple living quarters. They also were willing to sacrifice less pay than White workers in order to earn a nominal amount of money. Thanks to the work of the Chinese the railroad was completed in an incredible amount of time.

Railroads became extremely popular in America in the 1800’s. The railroad industry itself began to boom; it was supported by its reputation for speed and efficiency. But, along with the booming industry of railroads came the strong debate that

The transcontinental railroad was built by two major companies, the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific. The Central Pacific company worked eastbound. They faced the treacherous terrain of the Rocky Mountains, landslides, and winter snowdrifts. Central Pacific would hire Chinese immigrants. These Chinese immigrants, “... made up 85 percent of the Central Pacific workforce.” (Holt McDougal,