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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]
Hell on Wheels plaque in the Golden Spike National Historical Park Visitor Center in Promontory, Utah, February 2017. Hell on Wheels was the itinerant collection of flimsily assembled gambling houses, dance halls, saloons, and brothels that followed the army of Union Pacific Railroad workers westward as they constructed the first transcontinental railroad in 1860s North America.
He was a surveyor and worked with Theodore D. Judah to survey and evaluate various possible routes for the first transcontinental railroad through the Sierra Nevada. He built a number of ditches and water pipelines to serve mines and towns there, and became known as the “Father of Ditches.” He was also one of the founders of the Nevada ...
The United States' first transcontinental railroad was 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. Its construction was considered to be one of the greatest American technological feats of the 19th century.
Ceremony for the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad, May 1869, at Promontory Summit, U.T. The Southern states had blocked westward rail expansion before 1860, but after secession the Pacific Railway Acts were passed in 1862 [54] and 1863, which respectively established the central Pacific route and the standard gauge to be used.
A 1878 map shows principal cities and towns along the railroad. In 1874, Union Pacific investor Jay Gould gained effective control of the Kansas Pacific. In 1880, the Kansas Pacific and the Denver Pacific were consolidated at Gould's direction into the Union Pacific.
The town originated from a railway station built in 1885. The city is now an important crossroad of the old Trans-Caspian Railway and new North-South Transnational Railway. A railway town, or railroad town, is a settlement that originated or was greatly developed because of a railway station or junction at its site.
Construction of the road was financed primarily by 30-year, 6% U.S. government bonds authorized by Sec. 5 of the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862.They were issued at the rate of $16,000 ($265,000 in 2017 dollars) per mile of tracked grade completed east of the designated base of the Sierra Nevada range near Roseville, CA where California state geologist Josiah Whitney had determined were the ...