Railroads and Their Impact

Almost every story you have studied so far — migration, settlement, warfare, cattle, law and order — runs through the railroad at some point. This lesson pulls the railroad story together. It covers the building of the transcontinental railroad between 1863 and 1869, the workforce that built it, its economic impact on the West, and its devastating impact on Plains Indian life. A Q3 "importance" question on the railroad can reach Level 4 only if you can argue the railroad's impact across more than one domain at once — which is what this lesson equips you to do.

Origins: The Pacific Railroad Act 1862

You met the Pacific Railroad Act 1862 in Lesson 4. Its key provisions — federal loans and vast land grants per mile of track, to the Union Pacific building west and the Central Pacific building east — set the framework for everything that followed. Signed in the middle of the Civil War, it was both an economic and a political measure: binding the West to the Union economically just as Union armies fought to bind the South politically.

Building the Transcontinental Railroad 1863–69

Construction began from both ends in 1863, but the real pace of building came after the Civil War ended in 1865. Between 1866 and 1869 the Union Pacific built west from Omaha across the Plains, while the Central Pacific built east from Sacramento across the Sierra Nevada and the Great Basin. The two met at Promontory Summit, Utah on 10 May 1869, joined by a ceremonial golden spike.

Company	Route	Major challenge
Union Pacific	Omaha → Promontory	Plains distances, winter storms, Plains Indian resistance
Central Pacific	Sacramento → Promontory	Sierra Nevada mountains, tunnelling, deep snow

The achievement was extraordinary. Around 1,900 miles of track laid in roughly three years through some of the hardest terrain in North America. In May 1869, a passenger who had left Omaha could reach San Francisco in under a week — what had been a six-month wagon journey.

Chinese and Irish Labour

The transcontinental railroad was built by two largely immigrant workforces.

Central Pacific and Chinese workers

The Central Pacific, short of white labour in California, began hiring Chinese workers in 1865. By 1868 around 12,000 Chinese workers — roughly 80–90% of the Central Pacific workforce — were carrying out the dangerous work of blasting tunnels through the Sierra Nevada, including the 1,659-foot Summit Tunnel. Chinese workers were paid less than white workers ($30 a month vs.$30amonthvs.35), worked longer hours, and suffered heavy casualties in rockfalls, avalanches and blasting accidents. Estimates of Chinese deaths during construction range from around 150 documented to well over 1,000 in various oral and later accounts.

Chinese workers' contribution was central but was almost entirely absent from the 10 May 1869 ceremony at Promontory. Recovery of the Chinese story has been a major theme of late 20th- and early 21st-century historiography; Edexcel expects you to mention it.

Union Pacific and Irish workers

The Union Pacific relied heavily on Irish immigrant labour, many veterans of the Union or Confederate armies after the Civil War, alongside Mormons, African Americans and some German immigrants. Irish "tie-layers" and "rail-layers" were capable of laying up to 10 miles of track in a single day in ideal conditions. Like the Chinese workers, they worked under harsh conditions for low pay, with a high accident rate.

Labour turnover was very high on both sides. Camp life was hard: makeshift "hell-on-wheels" camps followed the railheads, mixing workers, gamblers, saloon keepers and prostitutes. These camps frequently turned into boomtowns (and sometimes permanent cities — Cheyenne, Wyoming, began as a Union Pacific camp in 1867).

flowchart LR
    A[Pacific Railroad Act 1862] --> B[Central Pacific from Sacramento]
    A --> C[Union Pacific from Omaha]
    B --> D[Chinese workforce tunnelling Sierra]
    C --> E[Irish workforce laying Plains track]
    D --> F[Promontory Summit 10 May 1869]
    E --> F

Economic Impact

The transcontinental railroad, and the branch lines that followed, transformed the Western economy.

New markets and new cities

• Cattle industry: Abilene, Kansas (1867) and later Dodge City became railheads for Texas cattle drives (Lesson 6), bringing beef to Chicago slaughterhouses.
• Wheat farming: Homesteaders (Lesson 4) could now ship grain east to Kansas City, Chicago and New York, feeding eastern cities and European markets.
• Mining: Bullion from Nevada, Colorado and the Black Hills moved east by rail, financing eastern banks.
• New urban centres: Cheyenne, Laramie, Ogden and Reno all grew up along the Union Pacific / Central Pacific line.

Land prices and the railroads as landlords

The enormous federal land grants to the railroads turned them into the largest private landowners in the West. Railroad companies advertised in Europe and in the eastern United States, sold their granted land to settlers, arranged credit and packaged tickets — creating whole chains of settler migration that depended on railroad financing. This dual role — transport provider and land seller — gave the railroads a political influence the West had never seen before.

National integration