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While federal, state and local governments did much to encourage and
promote the building of roads, canals, and mail systems, the federal
government placed particular emphasis on the development of a
transcontinental railroad to encourage western migration through the
creation of communities. Beginning in 1850, land grant bills were passed
giving free land to railroad companies for development of rail lines and
for future sales to settlers. In 1862, the Pacific Railway Act chartered
the Union Pacific Railroad and Telegraph Company and, over the next
decade, gave over 100 million acres to the railroad companies who built
the nation's first transcontinental line. This pamphlet notes the great
importance placed on the transcontinental railroad to develop markets,
spread civilization, increase immigration, and to protect settlers from
Native Americans. The Union Pacific Railroad was completed on May 10, 1869
when the Central Pacific Railroad from the west and the Union Pacific from
the east met at Promontory, Utah to lay the final track. Thousands of
Irish and Chinese workers labored to complete the project in six years.
Hundreds lost their lives in landslides, blizzards, and in unsafe
underground conditions. While it was an enormous engineering task of great
technological and symbolic importance, the project also produced one of
the greatest scandals in American history. The Credit Mobilier was a dummy
construction company owned by Union Pacific stockholders and many
Congressmen who, though dubious stock options, bribes, and corruption,
charged the government and investors twice the amount that it cost to
build the railroad and pocketed the rest for themselves. When the scheme
was revealed, a Congressional investigation expelled two members and
implicated many others including both of President Grant's vice-presidents
and House speaker James G. Blaine.
Also note the cover illustration of this pamphlet that shows various
aspects of building the road, the natural habitations, wild animals, and
Native American populations that the railroad traversed. The
illustration also indicates this pamphlet was also reprinted by the
Worcester
National Bank as a way of attracting investors in the railroad. The dates
on the
cover 1835 and 1870 refer to the lifespan of the railroad in America.
Clyde A. Milner II et al., The Oxford History of the American West
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 214-220; Lloyd Mercer,
Railroads and Land Grant Policy, a Study in Government
Intervention. (Academic Press, 1982) p. 1-5; Eric Foner,
Reconstruction; America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877. (Harper
and Row Publishers, 1988), p. 467; Mary Beth Norton et al, A People
and a Nation; A History of the United States. (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Company, 1986), 394-395,460; Robert V. Hine and John Mack
Faragher, The American West, A New Interpretive History ( New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 284-285.
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