Transcontinental Railroad Dbq Essay

While some were driven on what they believe was God’s will others saw Manifest Destiny as the historical inevitability domination of North America from sea to sea. Before, manifest destiny, many Americans had small families not by choice, but for the mere fact that many of the people would die before they would reach forty. By the mid 1800’s technology began to rise, and the life span for many Americans increased. The U.S. population grew from more than 5 million in 1800 to more than 23 million by the mid century. By the increasing of families in town many of the towns became overcrowded. At this point many Americans looked to the west for possible permanent homes.

“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

We all know that Necessity is the mother of Invention. All was started in 1849, when gold was discovered in California. After that many people moved to California searching for new opportunities. The overland journey through plains, mountains, rivers and deserts was extremely hard and dangerous. Many people choose to travel by sea and go around Cape Horn at the tip of South America for six month journey rather than go through Isthmus of Panama and risk their life with yellow fever and other diseases. At that time, Congress also wanted to protect gold and goods which was flowing between east and west. During that era, America had a local rail network which connected many cities on east coast. These all necessities had played main part in producing the idea of the first transcontinental railroad.

The transcontinental Railroad was completed on May 10, 1869. It had started in 1830 and took almost 4 decades to finish. By 1850 the track was about 9,000 miles long east of the Missouri River. At about the same time many people were moving west. It was a dangerous path over mountains, rivers, and deserts. Before the Transcontinental Railroad it cost almost $1,000 ($31,250.00 in 2015) to travel across the country, after the railroad it cost only $100 ($4,687.50 in

With Congress granting the railroad companies millions of acres of public land, a new railroad project dubbed the Transcontinental Railroad underwent construction. The Transcontinental Railroad would drive travel time down from three months by methods conventional to the times to only eight days by railcar. With the Homesteader act, the Transcontinental Railroad, and goods being more readily available, people found it much easier to settle the Great Plains. However, the expanse of the railroads created a false sense of economic growth, and with banks and investors feeding into that growth, catastrophe would soon follow. More money was being spent on the railroads than the railroad could return. The end result of this would cause the closing

Americans started their migration across the continent after the term “Manifest Destiny”, was introduced into their vocabulary. This belief drove Americans to understand that they had a right to take as much of the North American continent as they pleased. Manifest Destiny became a slogan, an advertisement to drive citizens from their comfortable lives on the Eastern seaboard and travel to the vast wilderness. This great migration even inspired the popular 90’s computer game Oregon Trail.

to many cities two decades of rail roads have been built (history.com). during this time

America is becoming more independent throughout this period by becoming industrialized. An example of industrialization during this period is the Erie Canal, Railroads, and The National Road. This meant there were many jobs that needed to be filled so there were many immigrants who came for the job opportunities America had to offer. For example, many immigrants such as the German and Irish typically typically settled in the Northeast. Reasoning behind many immigrants settling in the north was because there was more opportunity for work in the North because they were more industrialized than the south. Americans believed expanding westward was their right to expand westward which is known as Manifest Destiny. In the effort to move westward

Why do you think President Lincoln decided to support the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad, a very expensive project, even though the Civil War was still going on?

Transcontinental is going across a continent, and transcontinental railroads are the means that are used to go across continents from Eastern to the Western part of United States. The Union Pacific railroad offered railroad transport from New York on the Atlantic Coast, all the way to California, on the Pacific Coast of United States. The project of the railroad terminated in 1869, which was pioneered by two companies, which were Union Pacific and Central Pacific, built the railroad from east and west, and they met at Utah. Central Pacific laborers mainly consisted of the Chinese, while those in Union Pacific were mainly Irish. Both companies gave their workers harsh working conditions. The railroad made a major impact on transcontinental transportation but was faced by some dangers and difficulties.

The early 1800s was a period of westward expansion. The Great Migration was a time when moved thousands of Americans moved west, curious about unexplored western lands and wanting to acquire it. The appeal of the West grew, and settlers migrated. The ideals of the Manifest Destiny also had surfaced, that it was pre-ordained that the U.S. expand its borders to the Pacific Ocean. The American people did not like any Indian presence to impede their acquisition of lands westward and growth as a nation, despite trading with them frequently (Brinkley). The Manifest Destiny was, as stated in Cheryl D. Bohde’s article Young America, “…a philosophy that led to the expulsion of Native Americans from lands east of the of the Mississippi.” Conflicts with the Indians about

The United States, in the early 1800’s, was located in New England, the northeastern part of the contemporary United States. The Americans, then, sought to spread the American settlers and values throughout the entire continent of North America, starting with the neighboring Indian county. “[They] pretended to buy the land … but never paid the price,”

During the late eighteen hundreds, the Western United states began to change. This was due to the settlement of the white man expanding for many reasons; population had increased, food was becoming more of a necessity due to shortages, and it was becoming cramped in the southern states. Also, due to the idea of the Manifest Destiny, which is the belief that it was the white man's right to take the land no matter what it takes. Farmers, trappers, miners, and pilgrims traveled across the country in search of better lives to support their families along with their country.

Do you ever wonder what make our country so great? What events lead up to what we are today? The United States has many different ups and downs but one has an upside and a downside. I’m talking about the Transcontinental Railroad. The Transcontinental Railroad was the first railway to go across the country.

The topic of the American West has captivated and mystified people for decades. Tightly interwoven into the American identity and dream, Westward expansion is often seen with a positive and nearly nostalgic lens. Although we still dream to incorporate the spirit and values learned from expansion, the civilization the Great West did not serve each individual equally. While the civilization provides structure necessary for settlement and community, it also isolates and separates certain peoples. In the West, civilization was accompanied by ripples that adversely affected both American and Native peoples.