a total of about 36,466,000 acres. Even larger grants were to come in connection with the Pacific railroads. Eventually, Federal land grants to subsidize railroads amounted to 130.3 million acres, to which should be added 48.9 million acres of State land grants.[1]
Monument commerating the last spike on the joining of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads into the first transcontinental railway in this country.
Railroads Dominate U.S. Transportation
The northern States had such tremendous productive capacity that they were able to fight the Civil War and at the same time push a railroad across the western plains and mountains. This railroad, liberally aided by grants of public land and Government loans, was completed in 1869. Within the next 20 years, four other transcontinental railroads were completed, along with a north-south railroad through California, Oregon, and Washington Territory, and innumerable connectors, branches, and feeder lines all over the country. In 1887 alone, 12,878 miles of track were laid, and by 1900 there were 260,000 miles of railroad in the United States.[2]
These railroads opened up the country to settlement and development as it had never been opened before. They created the mass market that made the phenomenal industrial expansion of the 1880’s, 1890’s, and early 1900’s possible, and which in turn, started the trend toward urbanization that continues to this day.
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