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The Northern Pacific Railway (NP) was a transcontinental railroad that operated across the northern tier of the western states, from Minnesota to the Pacific Northwest. It was approved by Congress in 1864 and given nearly 40 million acres (62,000 sq mi; 160,000 km2) of land grants, which it used to raise money in Europe for construction.
The Official "Date of Completion" of the Transcontinental Railroad under the Provisions of the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862, et seq., as Established by the Supreme Court of the United States to be November 6, 1869. (99 U.S. 402) 1879 Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum
The Land Grant Act of 1850 [1] provided for 3.75 million acres of land to the United States to support railroad projects; by 1857 21 million acres of public lands were used for railroads in the Mississippi River valley, and the stage was set for more substantial Congressional subsidies to future railroads. [2]
This was the first railroad manufacturing facility in the U.S., and the company built locomotives, railroad cars, iron bridges and other equipment there. [ 31 ] : 208 Following the B&O example, U.S. railroad companies soon became self-sufficient, as thousands of domestic machine shops turned out products and thousands of inventors and tinkerers ...
Railroad land grants split the land surrounding the area where train tracks were to be laid into a checkerboard pattern. The land was already divided into 640-acre numbered sections (260 ha) according to the Public Land Survey System ; odd-numbered plots were given to private railroad companies, and the federal government kept even-numbered plots.
The Arkansas General Assembly advanced them $38,000 that year, but the outbreak of the American Civil War effectively halted construction the next year. [2] After the war, the state legislature passed a railroad aid bill in 1867, but Turner believed it would be inadequate to their needs, and sought aid from Northern capitalists. [2]
The transcontinental telegraph was completed on Oct. 24, 1861, making possible instant communication between the coasts possible for the first time. It rendered the Pony Express obsolete.
The Pacific Railroad Surveys (1853–1855) were a series of explorations of the American West designed to find and document possible routes for a transcontinental railroad across North America. The expeditions included surveyors, scientists, and artists and resulted in an immense body of data covering at least 400,000 square miles (1,000,000 km ...