Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
impact of the transcontinental railroad
how railroads changed america thesis and introduction
how railroads changed america thesis and introduction
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: impact of the transcontinental railroad
America was rapidly changing with the growth of ideas and inventions in the early nineteenth century. A major factor that allowed the United States to flourish in the late nineteenth century was the installment of the railroad system. The push to build railroads in the United States began in the 1830s and carried on far into the 1870s. The railways became an important system that guided settlement and delivered economic opportunity for much of the United States. Railroads allowed access to places that people had no means of getting to and provided an opportunity to develop cities and towns. The impact of the railways allowed the United States to become more mobile and efficient as it was going through a period of change. The railways changed the United States forever giving important links to the rest of the country. In the early nineteenth century the nation’s highways were the waterways such as rivers and canals. These means of travel were effective to an extent, but were limited by their permanent routes. The situation with the United States was that there was a thin population spread out over an enormous country, with long distances between major cities. Business owners and the government were looking for ways to improve economic chances. Cheap efficient land transportation was an essential need of the industrial revolution because the existing road transportation by wagon was just simply too slow. England was the first country to have railroads. In the 1930s the United States imported England’s technology for the railroads. The United States soon became self-reliable with their factories and numerous inventors and engineers improving the quality of the equipment being used on the railroads. In the early railroading day... ... middle of paper ... ...ner’s Sons, 1889 Brown, William H. The History of the First Locomotives In America. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1871 Stimson, A.L. History of the Express Business; Origin of the Railway System in America. New York: Baker and Godwin, Printers, 1881 Ophem, Marieke Van. The Iron Horse: the impact of the railroads on 19th century American society. University of Groningen, 1994-2010 Crandall, John. Railroads and the Market Economy. http://suite101.com, 2007 web. Withuhn, Bill. American Railroads in the 20th Century. http://americanhistory.si.edu. National Museum of American History. web. "Economy in Transcontinental Railroad.” Schmoop University, Inc. copyright: 2011 http://www.shmoop.com/transcontinental-railroad/economy.html web. “Driving the Last Spike.” San Francisco News Letter, September 1925. http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist1/rail.html web.
Ambrose, Stephen. Nothing Like It In the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001. Print.
To urban middle-class Americans of the late 19th century, nothing symbolized the progress of the American civilization quite as much as the railroad. Not only had the great surge in railroad construction after the Civil War helped to create a modern market economy, but the iron horse itself seemed to embody the energy, force, and technology of the new order. In fact, the fanning out of railroads from urban centers was an integral part of the modernizing process, tying the natural and human resources of rural areas to the industrializing core.
In Henry George’s article, What the Railroad Will Bring Us, it discusses the main social, political, and economic transformations that the trans-continental railroad would bring to the state of California. More importantly, he discusses not only the benefits, but also discusses the major drawbacks with the arrival of the railroad. Henry George stated the railroad would be the “greatest work of the age” (297). With a railroad stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, multiple benefits would be brought to the state of California. First, the railroad will not only create a new means of transportation across the United States, it additionally would also become “one of the greatest material prosperity” of its time (298). This means more people, more houses,
One of America’s oldest railroads, known as the first common-carrier railroad, was chartered on February 28th 1827, by a group of Baltimore businessmen. The main objective of the railway was to ensure traffic would not be lost to the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, which was proposed and ground broken the same time as the railroad. The new railroad was a big invention, which allowed people and freight to travel by train. This was a huge improvement for the United States, since everything was becoming more advanced in other countries. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company is the great railroad that owns up to the big title of “The First Common Carrier.” The B&O railroad has a rich history dealing with its background, building, competition, growth tactics, numerous raids, and involvement in the Civil War.
White, Richard. “Strike.” Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America. New York: W.W. Norton, 2011. N. pag. Print.
Taylor, George Rogers, and Irene D. Neu. The American Railroad Network, 1861-1890. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1956. Print.
Posts about Industrial Revolution on The Industrial Revolution & Railroads. (n.d.). Retrieved September 26, 2017, from https://indrevproject123.wordpress.com/category/industrial-revolution/
Ophem, Marieke Van. "The Iron Horse: the impact of the railroads on 19th century American society."
the early American economy was described by littler, nearby markets, revolved around huge urban communities. The boundless extension of the railways in the late 1800s changed this, entwining the nation into one national business sector, in which merchandise could be transported available to be purchased the nation over. The railways likewise gave a gigantic force to financial development since they themselves gave such an enormous business sector to products steel and timber, for instance. In the late nineteenth century the railways spoke to the primary "enormous business." The railroad business was the biggest single boss of work in the U.S., and institutionalized America financially, socially, and socially.
The growth of agriculture and railroads in Texas and in the United States helped form our economy today. Railroads today pass through a lot of Texas, and even in big cities like Houston or Dallas. Since there are so many farms and open farmland (especially in south and west Texas), railroads can carry the produce and livestock to their destination. James Watt invented the first steam engine in about 1769, and from then on, railroads were a must for transportation, since cars had yet to be invented. Railroads began to be built before the Civil War. It originally took about 6 months to get from the west of the US to the east, but now it only took 7 days. With railroads expanding all across the country, agriculture was affected in a mostly positive way. Now, crops and other goods could be transported by train anywhere in the US, and fast.
John Debo Galloway, The First Transcontinental Railroad: Central Pacific, Union Pacific (New York: Simmons-Boardman, 1950), 141, http://www.questiaschool.com/read/14065867.
The Manifest Destiny was a progressive movement starting in the 1840's. John O'Sullivan, a democratic leader, named the movement in 1845. Manifest Destiny meant that westward expansion was America's destiny. The land that was added to the U.S. after 1840 (the start of Manifest Destiny) includes The Texas Annexation (1845), The Oregon Country (1846), The Mexican Cession (1848), The Gadsden Purchase (1853), Alaska (1867), and Hawaii (1898). Although this movement would take several years to accomplish fully, things started changing before we knew it. New technology took off right away!
The railroad played a major role in forging the history of many countries including the United States of America. The railroad began to bring people to places that before then where only accessed by weeks of dangerous travel over harsh and deadly terrain. The industrial revolution had ushered in a completely new era. The new era was one of mass production, supply and demand, and new requirements of industry. The growth of industry had created new demands for transit, trade, and more robust supply lines. The railroad boom across the U.S. had spread and proceeded to grow the economy quickly therefore, many people began using the rail roads just as quickly. The rail market continued to grow and by the 1860’s all major cities within the United States were connected by rail.
Spearman, Frank H. "The First Transcontinental Railroad." Harper's Monthly Magazine, Volume 109 2011: 711-20. Web. 29 Sept. 2013. .
Farmers began to cultivate vast areas of needed crops such as wheat, cotton, and even corn. Document D shows a picture of The Wheat Harvest in 1880, with men on earlier tractors and over 20-30 horses pulling the tractor along the long and wide fields of wheat. As farmers started to accumilate their goods, they needed to be able to transfer the goods across states, maybe from Illinios to Kansas, or Cheyenne to Ohmaha. Some farmers chose to use cattle trails to transport their goods. Document B demonstrates a good mapping of the major railroads in 1870 and 1890. Although cattle trails weren't used in 1890, this document shows the existent of several cattle trails leading into Chyenne, San Antonio, Kansas City and other towns nearby the named ones in 1870. So, farmers began to transport their goods by railroads, which were publically used in Germany by 1550 and migrated to the United States with the help of Colonel John Stevens in 1826. In 1890, railroads expanded not only from California, Nebraska, Utah, Wyoming and Nevada, but up along to Washington, Montana, Michigan, down to New Mexico and Arizona as well. Eastern States such as New Jersey, Tennesse, Virginia and many others were filled with existing railroads prior to 1870, as Colonel John Stevens started out his railroad revolutionzing movement in New Jersey in 1815.