Financing the Transcontinental Railroad | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

Participate in high-quality professional development from anywhere in the world this summer with TEACHER SEMINARS ONLINE. Advertisement for shares in the Union Pacific Railroad, Harper’s Weekly, August 10, 1867. (Gilder Lehrman Collection) The first transcontinental railroad, built between 1864 and 1869, was the greatest construction project of its era. It involved building a line from Omaha, Nebraska, to Sacramento, California, across a vast, largely unmapped territory. To most Americans the West was as remote as the moon, its terrain as alien and forbidding. Like the moon project of a later generation, its conquest required immense resources. Unlike the moon project, the building of the railroad was undertaken by private interests, but only after Congress passed legislation to help finance the work. The term "transcontinental railroad" is misleading in that the United States has never had a railroad under one ownership that connected the Atlantic Coast to the Pacific. The first trans

Participate in high-quality professional development from anywhere in the world this summer with TEACHER SEMINARS ONLINE. Advertisement for shares in the Union Pacific Railroad, Harper’s Weekly, August 10, 1867. (Gilder Lehrman Collection) The first transcontinental railroad, built between 1864 and 1869, was the greatest construction project of its era. It involved building a line from Omaha, Nebraska, to Sacramento, California, across a vast, largely unmapped territory. To most Americans the West was as remote as the moon, its terrain as alien and forbidding. Like the moon project of a later