Why was the transcontinental railroad bad

In addition, the transportation of goods at the time was better suited to steamships. By the s, the Central Pacific Railroad was, White said, virtually worthless. The railroad was, however, evidence of the promise of the relatively nascent profession of civil engineering, according to engineering historian Paul Giroux, who described the unprecedented scale of construction — often in challenging conditions — of the First Transcontinental Railroad to members of the Stanford Historical Society at their recent annual meeting.

The tales of their shady railroad business deals, as well as those of the Union Pacific Railroad, have lingered. Stanford, she said, was a visionary who believed in the promise of California.

He was politically savvy and would serve both as California governor and U. It was a ruthlessly competitive business — and that was not unique to the Associates. Jones said that Stanford approached every venture — business or otherwise — with a commitment to improvement. That approach can be seen in the California vineyards he created, the racehorses he raised and the Palo Alto farm he nurtured and — ultimately — the university he founded.

For many years, Jones said, the university was deeply associated with the railroad. Students came from across the country to study railroad engineering. A Stanford Daily article announced an exhibition at the Stanford Library on the California railroad from its earliest days, featuring maps, illustrations and copies of telegraphs. Its name has since lent heft to an annual alumni recognition called the Gold Spike Award.

In addition, the Gov. The Gov. Stanford locomotive, brought to campus in , in the s went to the California State Railroad Museum, where it is on prominent display. Jones said the Gov. Stanford locomotive was moved to the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento in the s, where it is available for public viewing.

The manipulation of rates was not based on cost but by railroad advantage. For example, the railroad put steamboats on the Sacramento River out of business by charging high transfer fees. That then affected the river communities. Without the railroads there would have been less waste; less suffering; less environmental degradation; fewer economic busts in mining cattle and agriculture; more time for the Native Americans to adjust to the coming of civilization; and fewer booms and busts.

Railroaded has everything to make a cynic happy and validate his beliefs about human nature: political and economic skullduggery and chicanery, incompetence, misfeasance and malfeasance, misappropriation, insider benefits to public detriment, and cheating and theft. I wanted to read it. One could read just the introduction to get the point and then skim through the pages of proof quickly.

But for this esteemed journal or website if you are reading this on the web I slogged through all pages and then spent time with the long footnote list. White makes good points. There was corruption and manipulation. Clearly there were negative effects of the transcontinental railroads but does that mean they should not have been built? Did the negative effects outweigh the positive over the long term?

It took months to get to California before the railroad, or weeks on a stage. The railroad opened California to settlement and provided opportunity to many. Efforts to depict the transcontinental railroad as a grand project created by and for white Americans began just moments after the railroad was completed in , when a symbolic Golden Spike was hammered into the ground in Promontory Summit, Utah, where the rails constructed by the Central Pacific and Union Pacific met.

The official photo shows two engineers shaking hands, surrounded by workers with champagne bottles. Not one of the workers visible in the picture was Chinese. Who else but Americans could have laid 10 miles of track in 12 hours? Since then, the U. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us!

Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you. Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. Recommended for you. Transcontinental Railroad. Two Indians sit astride their horses, watching the progress of the great machine.

In a moment it will cover them. As usual with such prints, the symbolism of the images could hardly be clearer. A new order has arrived. It will make over the land. It will implant the essentials of a superior culture. They, or at least their way of life, will be first obscured and then will vanish. It was partly a matter of timing.

Railroads, as a technological marvel, appeared and spread just as the nation was acquiring and establishing its control over the far West and its native peoples. The first rail lines began operating in the s, but they truly began to come into their own early in the next decade. The amount of trackage in , fewer than three thousand miles, increased ten times over in the next twenty years, then leapt to more than , miles in Those same years saw the acquisition of the far West, its political organization, the start of its economic transformation—and the conquest and dispossession of its native peoples.

The two developments—westward expansion and the establishment of a national rail system—cannot be understood apart from one another. The consequences for American Indians were especially doleful. Railroads began to undercut native independence before a single mile of track had been laid. During the s the army surveyed and improved more than twenty thousand miles of roads in the West, but the greatest hopes were pinned on a transcontinental railroad.

Four possible routes were surveyed, each with its eastern advocates who hoped to benefit from the traffic.