The impact of the railroad on the geographic, economic, and political future of the United States was enormous, and not just because of the sheer physicality of the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad connecting the entire continent east to west in 1869.
This massive amount of construction was only a tiny piece of the large and varied impact of rail travel on the development of the United States, beginning some 30 years earlier.
Rail History in the United States
The first railroads in America were horse-drawn, but with the development of the steam engine, railroads became a viable enterprise. The era of railroad building began in 1830 when Peter Cooper's locomotive called the Tom Thumb was put into service and traveled 13 miles along what would become the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad line. Over 1,200 miles of railroad track were laid between 1832 and 1837. And, in the 1860s, the construction of the Transcontinental Railway brought the two coasts closer together.
The impact of railroad traffic was no less than a revolution of communication for the new territories of the rapidly expanding United States. Railroads created a more interconnected society. Counties were able to more easily work together due to the decreased travel time. With the use of the steam engine, people were able to travel to distant locations much more quickly than if they were using only horse-powered transportation. In fact, on May 10, 1869, when the Union and Central Pacific Railroads joined their rails at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory, the entire nation was joined with 1,776 miles of track. The Transcontinental Railroad meant that the frontier could be extended with a greater movement of population. Thus, the railroad also allowed people to change their place of living with greater ease than ever before. The advent of a rail network expanded the available markets for goods. An item for sale in New York could now make it out west in a much shorter time, and the railroads allowed the movement of a wider variety of goods much farther distances. That had a two-fold effect on the economy: the sellers found new markets in which to sell their goods and individuals who lived on the frontier were able to obtain goods that had previously been unavailable or extremely difficult to get.
