National Railroad System
The Central Pacific and Union Pacific were not recollective without contender . In 1864 , President Lincoln bless a beak authorizing the construction of the Northern Pacific Railroad from the upper Great Lakes to the Pacific Northwest . A generous estate President Grant of nearly 60 million land provided collateral for expression mortgages and young nation for easterner and immigrants athirst for a new life . A lavish gold - spike ceremony stigmatise the pass completion of this secondtranscontinental railroadon September 8 , 1883 .
Just ten twelvemonth later the indomitable James J. Hill completed the parallel Great Northern Railway , progress to the high banner without government subsidy . It also linked Chicago and the Great Lakes with the forests , farms , and port of Oregon and Washington . Both railroads reached up into Canada , supply an impetus for the construction of a true Canadian transcontinental .
By the metre Canada attain fond independence from Great Britain in 1867 , it had a little less than 2,500 stat mi of track , mostly in the East . The American transcontinental railroads personate a real threat to the untested Dominion of Canada , for its westerly province – most notably British Columbia – demanded the culmination of a true Canadian fussy - continent railroad as a status of continued participation in the federation .
After a few false start , the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1881 began an astounding push west across the Canadian Rockies that would splice the two oceans with yet another track route in just four year . A poster celebrate the 1885 effort tot up Canada ’s feelings : " A Red Letter Day . . . Our Own Line . . . No Customs , No Delays , No Transfers , Low Rates , Quick Time . " As in the United States , the railroad aid make Canada one country .
Throughout the 1880s , another round of railroad line fever swept the United States , as Chicago claimed the statute title of " Railroad Capital of the World " and former frontier frontier settlement such as Denver and Kansas City became bustle railroad line centers . Before long , the scope of railway line provide a rightfully nationwide market for industrial and agricultural goods , grant regional economic specialization . For example , steel - making concentrated in the sphere around Pittsburgh , while the Northern Plains states engaged in enceinte - exfoliation caryopsis production .
southerly railroads worked intemperately to reconstruct so they could connect with the burgeoning national system . At the end of May of 1886 , every railroad track in the South not built to stock gauge made a marathon exertion to convert tracks , cars , and locomotive to the national standard of 4 ' 8½ " . Over a few mean solar day , thousands of human race agitate runway and moved bike on their axles to make it possible for true car interchange throughout the nation .
Mineral wealthiness in the West lured iron track to the most remote and unprocurable corners of the earth . Between 1860 and 1890 , Nevada ’s Comstock Lode alone render $ 340 million in Au and Ag . railway carried machinery and consumer goods in , ore and alloy out , and thousands of treasure seeker in both direction .
Gen. William Jackson Palmer built a Colorado railroad imperium to the groundbreaking standard of measurement of three foot between the rails . By century ’s end , minute - caliber cut reach out across the Continental Divide at elevations in excess of 10,000 feet to relate distant mountain minelaying townspeople like Monarch , Ouray , Telluride , and Aspen with cosmopolitan Denver .
Gold also spur telling feat of railroad construction in Montana and Idaho , Eventually , less glamorous ( but equally valuable ) metals such as lead , copper , and atomic number 28 , supplement the bunce - and - bout cute metals economy and made yet another generation of miners and railroaders affluent .
railway also opened up the Southwest , where men attempt fortune in cattle , cotton wool , and pale yellow . The Atchison , Topeka & Santa Fe Railway completed a through - blood from Chicago to the Pacific coast in 1884 , the same year Collis P. Huntington and Leland Stanford - two of the " Big Four " who built the Central Pacific - finished the Southern Pacific Railroad from Los Angeles to New Orleans . Finally , the chief lines fancy by the Pacific Railroad Act of 1854 were in position . At about that time , Yankee railroaders reverse their attention to Mexico .
