Transcontinental Railroad Research Paper

Before 1870, there was no continuous system of commercial or civilian transport across the continental United States. Transporting people and goods from either coast is costly, complicated, and time-consuming. Shipping companies and merchants needed a way to get their merchandise from the East or West coasts to buyers in every part of the US. The Transcontinental Railroad was built for this purpose. The Transcontinental Railroad made modern America possible through the actions of its inventors, workers, and system. Asa Whitney introduced the idea of the Transcontinental Railroad. He was a merchant who traded American-made goods with China for tea and spices. Whitney wanted a quicker, more efficient way to travel to and from China (National …show more content…
Building the railroads was a major hassle and an extremely tedious process. “From 1866 to 1869, the Central Pacific built 15 tunnels and the Union Pacific built 4 four tunnels on the transcontinental line” (Linda Hall Library). This required blasting through solid granite. Nitroglycerine was used in the blasting process, along with black powder. Nitroglycerine was a brand new product introduced in 1866. Nitroglycerin was quickly banned for a short time after numerous accidents, then was reintroduced when the engineers realized it would take an agonizingly slow time to blast through the granite. Black powder, very similar to gunpowder, was used in its place until nitroglycerin was reintroduced (Linda Hall Library). The first recorded steam engine was called the “Aeolipile,” described by the Hero of Alexandria in 200 BC. In 1712, British inventor, Thomas Newcomen, and his assistant, John Calley, presented to the world the first commercially suitable steam engine. By 1802, British mining engineer, Richard Trevithick, created the first steam-powered locomotive (Linda Hall Library). In 1830, the steam-powered locomotive came to …show more content…
In 1832, American civil engineer John Jervis designed the necessary swiveling four-wheeled leading truck that guided the locomotive into curves (Linda Hall Library). Building a transcontinental railroad in the Sierra Nevada mountains was a dangerous undertaking. Blasting through granite requires nitroglycerin. It hadn’t made a name for itself until the explosion incident hit the news. Nitroglycerin is quite a hazard. On April 3rd of 1866, seven crates of it exploded on a steamship, killing fifty people. Two weeks later, a Wells Fargo employee set off a crate and flattened the Wells Fargo office. Not even two days later, yet another explosion was set off on the Central Pacific line (Linda Hall Library). Many of the workers were killed by explosions in the tunnels. Freezing temperatures, deep snow, and avalanches were hazards of working in the High Sierras (Digital History). The Transcontinental Railroad greatly improved the flow of goods across the U.S. From its creation to the hammering of the golden spike at Promontory Point in Utah, people from all walks of life were responsible for its successful completion. This new way of moving merchandise and people from one coast to the other brought America into the modern

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