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- Transportation does more than just move goods and people from one place to another; it plays a transformative role in shaping societies. The innovations during the transportation revolution had wide-ranging implications on American society. They influenced where people lived, how they worked, and even the culture and values they held.
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Describe the development of improved methods of nineteenth-century domestic transportation. Identify the ways in which roads, canals, and railroads impacted Americans’ lives in the nineteenth century. Americans in the early 1800s were a people on the move, as thousands left the eastern coastal states for opportunities in the West.
- OpenStaxCollege
- 2014
Journey though the history of the United States to learn how transportation changed American lives and landscapes. See behind-the-scenes stories about collecting and preparing objects for the exhibition.
- It Made The Western U.S. More important.
- It Made Commerce Possible on A Vast Scale.
- It Made Travel More Affordable.
- It Changed Where Americans lived.
- It Altered Americans’ Concept of Reality.
- It Helped Create The Victorian Version of Amazon.
- It Took A Heavy Toll on The environment.
- It Increased Racial Conflicts.
- It Pioneered Government-Financed Capitalism.
- It Instilled National confidence.
“What the transcontinental railroad did was bring the West into the world, and the world into the West,” explainsJames P. Ronda, a retired University of Tulsa history professor and co-author, with Carlos Arnaldo Schwantes, ofThe West the Railroads Made.In particular, it helped turn California from a once-isolated place to a major economic and polit...
By 1880, the transcontinental railroad was transporting$50 millionworth of freight each year. In addition to transporting western food crops and raw materials to East Coast markets and manufactured goods from East Coast cities to the West Coast, the railroad also facilitated international trade. The first freight train to travel eastward from Calif...
In the 1860s, a six-month stagecoach trip across the U.S. cost $1,000 (about $20,000 in today’s dollars), according to the University of Houston’sDigital Historywebsite. But once the railroad was built, the cost of a coast-to-coast trip became 85 percent less expensive. That made it possible for Americans to visit distant locales that previously th...
During the railroad’s construction, numerous temporary“hell on wheels” townsof tents and wooden shacks sprung up along the route to provide living quarters for workers. Most of them eventually disappeared, but others, such as Laramie, Wyoming, evolved into towns that provided rail terminals and repair facilities. Approximately7,000 cities and towns...
In an1872 article, naturalist John Muir wrote that the transcontinental railroad “annihilated” time and space. As Ronda explains, it changed the way that people viewed distances. “When you’re walking or riding a horse, you experience the world one way, but when you’re sitting in a railroad car, you see it differently,” he says. “In the West, where ...
In 1872, just a few years after the transcontinental railroad’s completion, Aaron Montgomery Ward started thefirst mail-order catalog business. As Ronda notes, the first transcontinental railroad—and other transcontinental lines that followed—made it possible to sell products far and wide without a physical storefront, and enabled people all over t...
The massive amount of wood needed to build the railroad, including railroad ties, support beams for tunnels and bridges, and sheds, necessitated cutting down thousands of trees, which devastated western forests. Towns and cities that sprung up along the railroad further encroached upon what had been wild areas. And the railroad and other rail route...
The completion of the transcontinental railroad led to heightened racial tensions in California, as white workers from the East Coast and Europe could more easily travel westward where immigrant laborers were prevalent, says Princeton University Assistant Professor of History Beth Lew-Williams, author ofThe Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and...
The Central Pacific’s “Big Four”—Stanford, Collis P. Huntington, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker—figured out how to tap into government coffers to finance a business that otherwise wouldn’t have been possible. AsRichard White, author of Railroaded:The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America, says, “They put little of their own money in...
The transcontinental railroad had a major effect on how Americans perceived their nation, and it became a symbol of America’s growing industrial power and a source of confidence that led them to take on even more ambitious quests. As Ronda says, “It’s one of the transformative moments in American history.”
Learning Objectives. Describe the development of improved methods of nineteenth-century domestic transportation. Identify the ways in which roads, canals, and railroads impacted Americans’ everyday lives in the nineteenth century.
The transportation revolution in the United States began when Americans taking advantage of features of the natural environment to move people and things from place to place began searching for ways to make transport cheaper, faster, and more efficient.
Apr 7, 2022 · Throughout U.S. history, changes in transportation technology have fueled the nation’s growth and shaped how its citizens live and work. A new primary source set from the Library of Congress documents some of the various modes of transportation used, illustrating how they have changed over time and their impact on American life.
May 31, 2022 · The railroad wasn't simply speedy—it fundmanetally transformed numerous facets of American life and culture, as well as facilitating communication and commerce on an unprecedented scale. The transcontinental railroad was hailed as a symbol of national pride, and Americans today still largely look back at this history fondly.
