Primary Sources
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In this photo from 1869, representatives from the East and the West shake hands at the laying of the last rail of the Union Pacific Railroad in Utah.
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Since Chinese immigrants would work for only 35 dollars a month, much less than other workers, the Central Pacific Railroad Company decided to employ up to 10,000 Chinese men to work on the railroad.
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Group portrait of men, some sitting on railroad ties.
Trains Transport Goods at Low Cost
The steam-powered locomotive ultimately had the most far-reaching impact. Trains were a heavy-duty, fast, year-round transport solution. In time, they became the preferred option for commercial shipping. The earliest U.S. railroads covered only short distances, providing portage between waterways. In 1827, a group of Baltimore, Maryland, businessmen formed a corporation to build the first major railway between their city and the Ohio River. Many more private railway enterprises followed in the decades prior to the Civil War. Between 1840 and 1860, the nation saw a tenfold increase in the amount of track laid, from 4,828 to 48,280 kilometers (3,000 to 30,000 miles). The majority of this development was in the northern states. The first transcontinental line was established in 1869. Eventually, the railways lowered the cost of transporting many kinds of goods.
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