If you like American History, please subscribe to our channel
and ring that bell so you can be notified when we put up a new video.
Without a doubt, America's greatest technological accomplishment of the 20th century
was landing man on the moon in 1969.
So, what was the America's greatest technological accomplishment of the nineteenth century?
Well, some say it was the greatest highway ever created!
It was 1869, and two steam locomotives met at Promontory Summit, Utah.
A golden spike was ceremoniously driven into the last railway tie.
And a huge crowd cheered at the completion of the first Transcontinental railroad!
This is a story about trains!
Next on Marking History!
This is the historical marker for the Golden Spike, signifying one of the most dramatic events in American history.
This marker is located here at the Golden Spike National Historic Park in Promontory, Utah.
When the Jupiter and the 119 met on May 10, 1869, it signified the completion of the American transcontinental railroad.
It connected the Central Pacific Railroad from the West with the Union Pacific Railroad from the East.
The meeting of these two railroads meant the joining of a continent.
And it totally transformed America forever.
Now let's learn more about the story behind the marker!
To appreciate the impact that the Transcontinental Railroad had in America,
we have to delve into the early history of passenger transportation in the United States.
It began with wagons.
By the 1820s stagecoaches were in service between New York and Boston.
Steamboats carried passengers and goods to and from New Orleans.
Early train cars were pulled along rails by horses.
When the first steam locomotives entered the scene, people were very concerned.
There were fears it would be impossible to breathe while travelling at such a velocity.
If you played Monopoly, you may remember the property called the B&O Railroad.
Well. it was named for a real one.
The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was the first common carrier steam railroad
and the oldest railroad in the United States.
Its first section opened in 1830.
The 1850s saw enormous growth in the railroad industry.
By 1861, 22,000 miles of track had been laid in the Northern states and 9,500 miles in the South.
Then came the American Civil War.
Although the South started early to build railways,
it concentrated on short lines linking cotton regions to oceanic or river ports.
The absence of an interconnected network was a major handicap to the Confederate Army during the Civil War.
The North and Midwest constructed railway networks that linked every major city by 1860.
This became a huge advantage for the Union war effort.
It was during the Civil War that the US Congress passed landmark legislation to encourage railroad expansion.
President Lincoln signed the Pacific Railroad Act on July 1, 1862,
authorizing the construction of the first continental railroad that would connect sea to shining sea.
In anticipation of the end of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln ordered the first
private railroad sleeping car in America, built by American inventor, George Pullman.
It was to be used by President Lincoln
as a means of travel during his effort to unite the nation after the Civil War.
Five days after the Civil War ended at Appomattox,
President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by well-known stage actor John Wilkes Booth.
As history observes, Lincoln's private rail car was used, not for touring the nation,
but for his funeral train instead.
Pullman arranged to have Lincoln's body carried from Washington, D.C. to Springfield Illinois on the sleeping car.
Hundreds of thousands of people lined the route to watch the sleeper car go by and to pay their last respects.
Pullman began to receive a vast number of orders for his sleeping car
even though his price was more than five times that of a regular railway carriage.
Overnight, train travel and the Pullman Sleeper cars became “America's hotels on wheels.”
Pullman's Luxury Cars were famous for the impeccable service and royal treatment provided by the staff.
He hired African American freedmen, who were previously slaves in the South, as porters for his luxury cars.
These porters were trained to be valets and waiters, were paid relatively well and got to travel all over US,
which gained them a position of respect in the black community.
In an era of significant racial prejudice,
being a Pullman Porter was one of the best jobs available for African-American men.
Pullman porters have been widely credited with contributing to the development of the black middle class in America.
George Pullman became the biggest single employer of African Americans in post-Civil War America.
The Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 stipulated that the Central Pacific Railroad Company
would start building in Sacramento and continue east across the Sierra Nevada Mountains,
while a second company, the Union Pacific Railroad, would build westward from the Missouri River,
near the Iowa-Nebraska border.
Over the next seven years, the two companies would race toward each other,
while facing incredible risks and daily dangers.
There were financial incentives for completing the route within ten years.
Each company would receive 6,400 acres of land, later doubled to 12,800,
and up to $48,000 in government bonds for every mile of track built.
Because they were being paid by the mile, they sometimes built winding roads to collect more mileage.
For construction, they used cheap and light wrought iron rails.
The Central Pacific had the most challenging route, crossing over the Sierra Nevada mountains.
In 1865, after struggling with retaining workers, due to the difficulty of the labor,
Central Pacific decided to hire Chinese laborers. They proved to be tireless workers.
By early 1867 some 14,000 Chinese laborers toiled under brutal working conditions in the mountains.
The most difficult challenge in its construction was the crossing of the Sierra at the famous Donner Pass
at elevation of over seven thousand feet.
The 1,659-foot Tunnel#6 at Donner Pass took 15 months to excavate.
Chinese workers labored with hand drills and risked their lives with black powder and newly invented nitroglycerine.
The Union Pacific finally began to move westward in May 1866.
Their work force was mainly Irish immigrants and Civil War veterans.
The company suffered bloody attacks on its workers by Native American Indian tribes who were understandably threatened
by the progress of the white man and his “Iron Horse” across their native lands.
Still, the Union Pacific moved relatively quickly across the plains,
compared to the slow progress of their rival company through the Sierra Mountains.
The defining moment came on Monday, May 10, 1869 at Promontory Summit, Utah.
Thousands of people showed up for this once in a lifetime experience.
During the ceremony, telegraph wires were connected to the golden spike
so that the hammer strikes could be broadcast “live” across the country.
After all the lofty speeches ended, Governor of California Leland Stanford took a mighty swing at the golden spike,
but struck the railway tie instead!
Union Pacific Vice-President Thomas Durant, still not feeling too well from a previous night's party,
took a feeble swing, and did not even hit the tie!
Finally, a regular rail worker drove home the last spike.
After that, the Western Union telegrapher sent the long awaited message ...
A San Francisco author, Bret Harte, wrote a poem to commemorate the event.
It was an astounding event.
After the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, transportation of passengers and goods changed forever.
The 2,000 mile trip from the Missouri River to the Pacific
was reduced from six months travel by stagecoach or covered wagon
to just six days by train!
And cost of traveling across the continent was reduced from approximately $1000 down to a mere $70!
With success came more train routes.
Scheduling trains became impossible when you had 8,000 different time schedules on 500 different rail lines.
On November 18, 1883, precisely at noon, North American railroads switched
to a new standard time system for rail operations, which they called Standard Railway Time.
This resulted in the creation of four standard time zones across America.
Trains played a large role in the development of the United States
from the industrial revolution in the North-east to the settlement of the American West.
The railroads laid the basis for the creation of the single largest market in the world economy.
And this made it possible for the United States to become a global economic power by the end of the 19th century.
Today, you can observe an historical reenactment at the Golden Spike National Historic Park in Utah.
Between May and October, thousands of visitors come from around the world
to see the incredible replicas of the “Jupiter” and the “119”.
And to experience another strike of the golden spike heard ‘round the world.
If history can be taught with stories
they can never be forgotten.
Please like our video
subscribe to our channel
and ring the bell to stay informed on the latest video.
And don't forget to leave your comments below and tell us what you like about this video.