The Railroad
To enable peolpe to get from A to B stage
- coach companies were set up. They were also used to transport gold
and mail across America. It was a very slow and dangerous journey
across the Plains as stage coaches could not travel very fast. From
the 1950's onwards the US government encouraged railroad companies
to build rail lines across the country. The companies were given large
amounts of land where they built their lines and then sold the land
on to the settlers, who got there on the railroads.
It was not an easy job by any means to
build these railroads. There was, no heavy machinery and most of
fthe hard work had to be done by hand. The Native Americans didn't
make it any easier by attacking 'the workers' , as they did not want
the railroad to go ahead. Thousands of workers were brought in from
china by the Central pacific Company who were building the line eastward
from California. In May 1869 at a place called Promontory which is
in Utah the line that was built by the Central Pacific Company joined
the line that was being built westward by the union Pacific Company.
The East and West coasts of America became one.
The
History of the West - Native
American Peoples Of the Plains - Wagon
Trains - Gold Fever - Ranches
on the Plains - Cowboys - Homesteaders - Justice
in the Wild West - War
Between The Settlers and The Native American Indians
