Transcontinental Railroad Case Study

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The Express Way to the West What were the reasons behind the Transcontinental Railroad? Jeremy Latham US History Period 3 December 13, 2013 The day was May 10, 1869 the final spike to bring a wound nation together had just been pounded in, and the meaning behind this one spike was that it was the final spike in the Transcontinental Railroad. The first railway to connect the east coast to the west coast, but none of this would have been possible with the greatest man of the day know as President Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was the man who brought the idea to congress and the one who signed it into order. He did this all through what is known as the Pacific Railroad Act. The Pacific Railroad Act was actually two acts in its self. What the acts did was to grant extensive land grants to the Pacific Railroad Company and the Central Pacific Railroad…show more content…
In addition to land grants it also gave 200 feet of public land on either side of the railroad. What this act also established in section 3 was that ten square miles or 6,400 acres of public land for every mile of grade except where railroads ran through cities or crossed rivers. [Lalor] In total between the years of 1850-1871 175 million acres of public land had been given to the railroad companies. The second act of the Pacific railroads Acts was to establish the gauge at which the tracks width would be laid. Once this was all established it was time to enlist companies to build the transcontinental railroad. The economic gain to be had in building the Transcontinental Railroad was immense, but the only two companies to realize this were the Union Pacific railroad company and the Central Pacific railroad company. The
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