Transcript student_powerpoint_2

The Race Across America: The First
Transcontinental Railroad
By Brandon Foo
Introduction:
• The transcontinental railroad was an innovated technology by conveniently
and efficiently letting people travel across the country. Replacing months of
travel to mere weeks, it allowed communication and trade across vast
amounts of distances. It employed both Chinese immigrants and Irish
workers who helped build the railroad. After it was completed, it united the
country together and helped build the way for commerce, people and ideas
to travel from the east to the west.
Part 1: How it was built
Union Pacific Railroad
• The Union Pacific Railroad would
start at Omaha, Nebraska and go
west
Central Pacific Railroad
• The Central Pacific Railroad would
start at Sacramento, California and
go east
Pacific Railroad Acts of 1862 and 1864
• It outlined how the railroad was going to be built, the route it was going to
take and how it was going to get funded.
• The path that they would go through followed the established Oregon and
California trails, which was used at the time by wagon trains, stagecoach lines
and the Pony Express.
Part 2: Technology Usage
Black Powder/Nitroglycerin
• Black powder was usually used to blast
Telegraph Lines
• Nitroglycerin at the time was fairly new as
• Used on the day the railroad was completed
through the hard rock, but some situations,
nitroglycerin had to be used.
a blasting tool and was very dangerous to
transport, so they had to make it on the
site.
• Brought instant communication to people
working along the tracks to people across the
nation
where telecommunication lines were wrapped
around the last spike on the track and whenever
the person struck the spike, the sound pulsated
across the nation.
Part 2 Continued
Snow sheds
• Snow and avalanches were delaying
construction and supervisors had
to devise a plan to overcome it.
Snow sheds were built by making a
shelter over the tracks so the snow
would not interfere the
construction of the railroad
Bridges/Trestle Bridges
• Trestle bridges were built when
there was a deep gorge that the
railroad had to go over and was
usually built with timber until it
could have been replaced with iron,
which is more durable and
permeant.
Part 3: Social Impact
Chinese Immigrants
• The Chinese were the backbone of
building the tracks for the Central
Pacific and compromised nearly
80% of the workforce
• They worked in eight hour shifts
and only stopped when another
person had to put in the black
powder, where they lit fuse and
would then run to a safe distance to
Irish Immigrants and Civil War
Veterans
• On the Union Pacific Railroad, it
mostly consisted of Irish
immigrants and Civil War Veterans.
• The Irish workers and veterans
constantly got drunk, went to
brothels and gambling dens which
brought a lot of vices to the towns
that the tracks went through.
Part 3 Continued
Mormons
Native Americans
• The main reason why the Mormons • For the Native Americans, the
worked on the railroad was because
it would go through the Utah
territory, which is where most of
them were located
• The Mormons helped build 350
miles of track in exchange for
$2,125,000 million and the railroad
going through Salt Lake City
transcontinental railroad was a
travesty for them, since the railroad
entered territory that they held
• They soon began raids on the labor
camps along the line to try to stop
their progress.
• The railroad company responded
by increasing their security and
Part 4: Impact/Importance
• The culmination of the railroad being finished was when the golden spike
was struck, a symbolic act of finishing the railroad, where cities and people
across the nation participated in the event
• It made the flow of ideas and material to flow more easily across the country,
people could move to the west cheaper and faster, and opened the west for
settlement.
Conclusion: How it relates to today
• Instead of trains and railroads shrinking the time for information and people
to travel the country, now it is the internet and airplanes doing the job. With
the age of the internet and near instant information, anyone can connect
with anyone, anywhere.
References
•The New York Herald, The Pacific Railroad, May 12, 1869
•Stephen Ambrose, Nothing like it in the world: The men who built the
transcontinental railroad, November 6, 2001
•James E. Vance, The North American Railroad, 1995
•History.com staff, Transcontinental Railroad, 2010
•Richard White, Transcontinental Railroad: Compressing Time and Space, 2011
•“History: First Transcontinental Railroad for Kids." Ducksters. Technological
Solutions, Inc. (TSI), Apr. 2015. Web. 19 Apr. 2015.