Transcontinental Railroad

By the mid 1800s, American pioneers dreamed of building a railroad that would cross the American continent. One such pioneer was Asa Whitney, a New York tea merchant who began to promote the idea of a transcontinental railroad in 1844 after returning from China. Fully aware of the benefits such a railroad promised for trade with China and East India, Whitney declared his intention to build a railroad from Lake Michigan through the South Pass to the Pacific, backed with a land grant 60 miles wide along the length of the road.

Whitney brought his proposal to Congress in 1848, but it was voted down due to its unrealistic construction scheme. Another, better-prepared proposition was presented to Congress in 1850 and again in 1851, but it failed to earn sufficient support because of conflicting interests between the Northern and Southern states. The Southern states were opposed to the project altogether. Whitney then turned to the English government and proposed a similar plan for a transcontinental railroad through Canada. This attempt failed as well.

Asa Whitney ran out of money and finally gave up his campaign in 1852. However, his dream of the Pacific Railroad stayed alive. The discovery of gold in California not only created the market for the first important transcontinental traffic, it also significantly changed the public attitude towards the West. The West was no longer considered a wasteland of mountains and plains. It was seen as the land of opportunity. Scores of people wanted to travel beyond the Mississippi, through the territories that stretched to the Pacific Coast.

In 1853, Congress passed an act providing for the survey of possible railroad lines from the Mississippi to the Pacific. At least five routes were surveyed, and each received support from a different sector. Unfortunately, the multitude of diverse interests among the supporters and an increasing rift between the North and the South rendered agreement on a route impossible.

In 1860, Republican Abraham Lincoln won election to the White House on an anti-slavery ticket. His election almost immediately caused the longstanding rift between the North and the South to intensify, and very shortly thereafter the Southern states followed South Carolina into secession. The violent conflict that would later be known as the Secession War, or the American Civil War, had begun.

However, with the Southern states out of the picture the major antagonism to the transcontinental railroad was gone, and both the Senate and House of Representatives were able to pass the Pacific Railroad Acts of 1862 and 1864. These laws granted rights of way and use of building materials along the way, a 20-million-acre land grant and government support for loans of 60 million dollars to companies that would build the transcontinental railroad and its feeder lines. Those companies included:

• the Union Pacific Railroad, to be built from the Platte River Valley in Nebraska to the border between Nevada and California, with two feeder lines from Omaha and Sioux City;
• the Central Pacific Railroad, to be built as a feeder line from Sacramento over the Sierra Nevada to meet the Union Pacific eastwards and to San Francisco in the West;
• and the Leavenworth, Pawnee & Western, later to be known as the Union Pacific Eastern Division, which was to link the 100th meridian Southeast with Kansas City.

The charters awarded to the railroads provided rights of way and use of stone and timber to build the roadbed, and granted 6,400 acres of land for each mile of railroad built. Based on the estimates made after the surveys, the government agreed to provide nearly half the needed capital for the project, about 60 million dollars. More than 50 million dollars would have to be raised from private investors.