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America's first transcontinental railroad (known originally as the " Pacific Railroad " and later as the "Overland Route") was a 1,911-mile (3,075 km) continuous railroad line built between 1863 and 1869 that connected the existing eastern U.S. rail network at Council Bluffs, Iowa, with the Pacific coast at the Oakland Long Wharf on San ...
Transcontinental railroad. A transcontinental railroad or transcontinental railway is contiguous railroad trackage, [1] that crosses a continental land mass and has terminals at different oceans or continental borders. Such networks can be via the tracks of either a single railroad or over those owned or controlled by multiple railway companies ...
Asa Whitney (1797–1872) was a highly successful dry-goods merchant and transcontinental railroad promoter. [1] He was one of the first backers of an American transcontinental railway. A trip to China in 1842–44 impressed upon Whitney the need for a transcontinental railroad from the Atlantic to the Pacific. [2][3]
Collis Potter Huntington (October 22, 1821 – August 13, 1900) [2] was an American industrialist and railway magnate. He was one of the Big Four of western railroading (along with Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker) who invested in Theodore Judah's idea to build the Central Pacific Railroad as part of the first U.S. transcontinental railroad. [3]
Theodore Judah was born in 1826 (perhaps 1825 [1]) in Bridgeport, Connecticut, the son of Mary (Reece) and The Rev. Henry Raymond Judah, an Episcopal clergyman. [2] After his family moved to Troy, New York, Judah attended the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, then called the Rensselaer Institute in 1837 for a term [3] and developed at a young age a passion for engineering and railroads.
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 original "golden spike", on display at the Cantor Arts Museum at Stanford University. The Golden Spike (also known as The Last Spike [1]) is the ceremonial 17.6-karat gold final spike driven by Leland Stanford to join the rails of the first transcontinental railroad across the United States connecting the Central Pacific Railroad from Sacramento and the Union Pacific Railroad from Omaha on ...
In the fall of 1853, Frémont embarked on another expedition to identify a viable route for a transcontinental railroad along the 38th parallel. The party journeyed between Missouri and San Francisco, California, over a combination of known trails and unexplored terrain.