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America's first transcontinental railroad (known originally as the "Pacific Railroad" and later as the "Overland Route") was a 1,911-mile (3,075 km) continuous railroad line built between 1863 and 1869 that connected the existing eastern U.S. rail network at Council Bluffs, Iowa, with the Pacific coast at the Oakland Long Wharf on San Francisco Bay. [1]
The route of the first transcontinental railroad would determine whether slaves could be legally and efficiently trafficked into these geographically isolated territories. [ 5 ] [ 6 ] So the route was not just ancillary to free soil policy, but could ultimately affect the balance of power between the north and south in Congress when new states ...
The railway is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Niles Canyon Transcontinental Railroad Historic District. [1] The railroad is operated and maintained by the Pacific Locomotive Association which preserves, restores and operates historic railroad equipment. The NCRy features public excursions with both steam and diesel ...
The Overland Limited leaving 16th Street station (Oakland), in 1906. The Overland Route was a train route operated jointly by the Union Pacific Railroad and the Central Pacific Railroad/Southern Pacific Railroad, between the eastern termini of Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Omaha, Nebraska, [1] and the San Francisco Bay Area, over the grade of the first transcontinental railroad (aka the "Pacific ...
It was completed in September 1869 [11] by the Western Pacific Railroad (1862–1870), but lost its transcontinental traffic in 1879 to a shorter route through Benicia. The Southern Pacific tracks in Niles Canyon are on the north side of the canyon. [10] Southern Pacific, being the first railroad in the canyon, chose the best route.
A transcontinental railroad or transcontinental railway is contiguous railroad trackage [1] that crosses a continental land mass and has terminals at different oceans or continental borders. Such networks may be via the tracks of a single railroad, or via several railroads owned or controlled by multiple railway companies along a continuous route.
Map of NPR Land Grant, c1890. The 38th United States Congress chartered the Northern Pacific Railway Company on July 2, 1864, with the goals of connecting the Great Lakes with Puget Sound on the northwestern coast of the United States on the Pacific Ocean, opening vast new lands for farming, ranching, lumbering and mining, and linking the federal territory of Washington and state of Oregon to ...
Later modifications to the line reduced the mileage at that point from 1000 miles to 959.66 miles (1,544.42 km), but in 1982, Union Pacific planted a new tree to commemorate the site. [3] This particular tree stands today within a special fenced enclosure along the original transcontinental line, where it has grown to over 30 feet (9.1 m) tall.