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1-12 Business and Economic Environments [CH 1

march toward industrialization. Agriculture became mechanized, and factories
sprang up everywhere. But real progress did not occur until railroads provided a
fast, economical method to transport both farm and manufactured goods.
The American Industrial Revolution spread by the rapid construction of railroad
systems during the 1840s and 1850s. Not only did railroads provide the necessary
transportation system, but they also consumed large quantities of lumber, steel, and
real estate.

When the first large contingents of settlers began moving through the mid-west
region of the United States in the 1840s, most of the land was thought to be pretty
worthless for farming. Land west of the 100th parallel—where modern-day Cozad,
Nebraska sits—was called the Great American Desert and deemed suitable only for
buffalo, antelope and the American Indian. Indeed, the first white visitors to the

Platte River Valley were just that: visitors. They were headed west along what
became known as the Great Platte River Road. Oregon, and California beckoned
them with the siren’s call. Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado were just a flat route to
the richer lands and the railroads were used to tie the nation together.

Transcontinental Railroad
As early as 1832 the nation had realized a need to tie California to the rest of
the states through the means of a transcontinental railroad system, even though
California was not yet a part of the Union. In 1849 and 1850, Howard Stansbury

surveyed a route for a transcontinental railroad through the Black Hills and south of
Salt Lake City. It was March of 1853, Congress approved measures for the war
department to survey various transcontinental railroad routes. As early as 1858, the
visionary George Pullman began building sleeping cars that would one day be used
on the transcontinental railroad.
Finally, in 1862 with the support of President Lincoln and after years of hostile
debate, Congress gave its blessing with the passage of the Pacific Railway Act
which authorized the building of the first transcontinental railroad, with the Union
Pacific Railroad building west from Omaha, Nebraska and the Central Pacific
Railroad building east from Sacramento, California. When finished, there was
nothing like it in the world,.
The Pacific Railway Act ensured the transcontinental railroad's loans, paying
the builders for each mile of track laid various rates: $16,000 on the plains, $32,000
through the Great Basin and $48,000 through the mountainous terrain. In addition
the Pacific Railway Act granted the Transcontinental Railroad builder’s alternate
sections of public land on each side of the track for each mile of track built. The
land grant served two purposes: First it could be used to encourage settlement of the
western lands of the nation. Second the land could be subdivided and townships
plotted and sold to help finance the railroad construction. A section of land is 640
acres and the railroads could subdivide these properties into towns, with commercial
lots and delineating streets. The railroads would then offer the land to new settlers,
transporting them to these new developments, encouraging resource development
and new farms, which in turn would allow the railroads to transport the new owners
goods to the rest of the nation.
In 1864 the Pacific Railway Act was changed to 20 alternate sections. In the
end, the Transcontinental Railroad Companies acquired 33 million acres.
The Transcontinental Railroads got off to a slow start due to the Civil War and
a lack of investors, but by 1866 the race was on. The Transcontinental Railroads
overcame granite, bad winters, heat of the desert, lack of supplies and Indians, to
build a railway system that spanned the continent.
Racing across the continent, the Transcontinental Railroads leapfrogged their
surveying and grading crews with blasting crews for two hundred miles in the Utah
Territory. This overlapping was too close for comfort and many of the men for both
the Union Pacific Railroad and Central Pacific Railroad were lost to accidents.
Finally, the government in January of 1869 sent a commission of civil
engineers to decide where the two Transcontinental Railroads should meet. The
final decision was for Promontory Summit. Promontory Summit is 56 miles west of
Ogden Utah territory. On May 10, 1869, at Promontory Summit, the first of five
transcontinental railroads were completed. The golden spike was driven in the last

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