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Impact of the transcontinental railroad
How railroads changed america thesis and introduction
How railroads changed america thesis and introduction
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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.