Transcript The trancontinental Railroad

Happy Wednesday, 9/28/16
Do Now:
Please take out your transcontinental HW and
Activity List & Schedule.
Whole Class Benchmark:
AGENDA:
WC Benchmark: 20 min.
Remaining Time:
Activity List
Challenges
The Great Race: 2 companies, the
Central Pacific and the Union Pacific,
raced to complete the
transcontinental railroad.
The Great Race
Why would the federal
government want to build
a transcontinental railroad?
The Pony Express: system of messengers on
horseback to carry mail from one relay station to
another 2,000 miles (replaced by telegraph lines)
Unite the country, power
• The expansion to the west created a need to
move people & goods
to the west
and natural resources to the east
• Time / safety
How should the government
accomplish this?
• President Lincoln wanted to connect the
country he encouraged the passing of the
Pacific Railway Acts in 1862/64. The Acts
gave railroad companies loans and large land
grants, which could be sold to pay for
construction costs (1872 – 125 million acres)
• Railroad companies would now compete
against each other for land rights and $.
The transcontinental railroad: a railroad
that stretches across the continent from
coast to coast
•
The Union Pacific
Started building a rail line from Omaha,
Nebraska, westward
• laid 1,000 miles of track through the Great
Plains: Missouri River to the Rockies
• Main workers: Irish, freedmen, former Civil
War soldiers, Mexicans
Central Pacific
• Began building in Sacramento, California and
built eastward
• Main workers: Chinese (10,000/12,000
workers)
• Crossed deserts in CA and carved a railroad
path through the Sierra Nevada mountains700 miles of track
“Done” May 10, 1869 (6 years later)
Who was given the honor of hitting in
the last spike?
Commemoration: May 10, 1869
“What was it the engines
said, pilots touching head to head
Facing on a single track,
half a world behind each
back”
Bret Harte, What the
Engines Said
Economic, social, & political effects of
the transcontinental railroad
• It was the lifeline for the settlers in the West. It brought
supplies, processed goods from the East and from the
West it brought raw materials: lumber, livestock
(Chicago) grains
•
•
•
•
The steel, lumber, and coal industries grew
Cattle industry developed.
Employed thousands of workers
New towns and businesses grew along the rail lines.
By 1895: 6 more transcontinental lines
How does a new technological
advance affect different groups in
society?
Positives
Negatives
Standard time created: divided the
country into 4 time zones
How has the role of trains changed
today?
connection
• Stockfootagebuildingthetr 50sec.