THE RAILROAD
The railroad played a major role in the growth of the nation. It
unified a sprawling country and spurred the industrial revolution.
Early railroads used horse drawn carriages, but the real beginning of
the railroad era began on Christmas Day in 1830 when the first steam
locomotive inaugurated passenger service in Charleston, South
Carolina.
Within a decade more than 2,800 miles of track were in operation,
with five out of six New England states laying rails. By 1850, more
than 9,000 miles of track had been laid. As transportation links
developed in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic states, they now
connected the growing midwest.
But it was during the decade between 1850 and 1860 that the
railroads grew into a true network, serving all of the states East of
the Mississippi River. Track mileage more than tripled and
construction was so great that the United States almost equaled the
rest of the world in total mileage.
Rival transportation felt this growth in the West and traffic
shifted from the North-South axis of the rivers to an East-West axis
of the rails. The railroads played a key role during the Civil War,
with both sides moving troops and supplies in great numbers. But the
superior network of the North contributed to the defeat of the
Confederacy.
The period after the Civil War until World War I was the golden
age of the railroads, with no other form of transportation to
challenge its leadership. On May 10, 1869 the country was connected
from coast to coast when the completion of the transcontinental
railroad in North America became a reality. The tracks of the Union
Pacific joined those of the Central Pacific at Promontory Point,
Utah. The event fulfilled dreams of spanning the continent that were
spurred by settlement of the American West and that dated back to at
least 1845.
Interest in a transcontinental railroad was heightened by the
acquisition of Oregon (1846) and California (1848) and the subsequent
gold rush. In 1853, Congress appropriated $150,000 to defray expenses
of surveying feasible routes, but the question of the best one
quickly became a matter of sectional controversy.
Railroad construction had regional impact too. For over a twenty
year period, ranchers followed cattle routes to the rails. From 1865
to 1880 at least 3.5 million cattle were driven in herds of between
1,500 to 3,000 from southern Texas to cattle towns on rail lines in
Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Wyoming. The route most frequently
used was the Chisholm Trail, which went to Abilene, Kansas. This was
used as the most efficient way of getting the cattle to market until
the railroads were extended into the Texas range country.
During the decade after the Civil War, track was standardized,
time zones were introduced and by 1885 four new transcontinental
lines had reached the West coast. Railroads and the economy
flourished with cheap freight rates promoting industrialization and
national markets.
By 1930 railroads had reached their peak, with almost 430,000
miles of track. With the competition from trucks and airlines it
eroded most of the railroad business, so that by the mid-70s ten
railroads in the Northeast and midwest were in bankruptcy.
In 1971, Amtrak was formed by the government to provide passenger
service that the railroad companies could not afford and serve as a
link between major urban centers. When Amtrak went into operation, 18
of the 22 large passenger railroads joined the corporation. Amtrak
reduced routes and service by roughly half, to a total of 21 routes
serving 340 United States cities on about 20,000 miles of track. The
four remaining passenger lines came into the system later - the last
being the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad in 1983. With the
exception of commuter lines connecting major cities with their
suburbs, all intercity passenger rail service today is supplied by
Amtrak.
The miles of railroad track have declined steadily since 1930 and
the number of passengers traveling by train is now a fraction of what
it once was. But railroads even today, are still an important part of
our nation's transportation network.
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