This made transcontinental railroad travel possible for the first time in U. No longer would western-bound travelers need to take the long and dangerous journey by wagon train. Since at least , both Eastern and frontier statesmen realized a need to connect the two coasts. It was not until , though, that Congress appropriated funds to survey several routes for the transcontinental railroad.
The actual building of the railroad would have to wait even longer, as North-South tensions prevented Congress from reaching an agreement on where the line would begin.
One year into the Civil War , a Republican-controlled Congress passed the Pacific Railroad Act , guaranteeing public land grants and loans to the two railroads it chose to build the transcontinental line, the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific. With these in hand, the railroads began work in from Omaha and Sacramento, forging a northern route across the country. In their eagerness for land, the two lines built right past each other, and the final meeting place had to be renegotiated.
Harsh winters, staggering summer heat and the lawless, rough-and-tumble conditions of newly settled western towns made conditions for the Union Pacific laborers—mainly Civil War veterans of Irish descent—miserable. The overwhelmingly immigrant Chinese work force of the Central Pacific also had its fair share of problems, including brutal hour work days laying tracks over the Sierra Nevada Mountains they also received lower wages than their white counterparts.
The AP Corporate Archives contributed to this report. Sections U. Science Technology Business U. AP Was There: railroad completion ushered in new era.
May 10, GMT. The message was a duplicate of the one sent years earlier after the completion of the first railroad transcontinental link.
AP Photo, File. Connect with the definitive source for global and local news. The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The farms, lots and corrals are fenced; every kind of modern farm machinery is in use, and from all wandering, useless being, the noble Red Man has become an independent farmer, and some of them are getting rich. The report could have very well been true as the newspaper saw the facts.
They learned to farm and ranch the land, they helped build the Logan Temple and the Samaria Canal. They had a saw mill and made their own bricks.
They raised horses, sheep, chickens, pigs and cows. And, they had allotments of land from the U. Those who declined the land were given a promise that they would be taken care of by the "Church. The railroad was the end, and the beginning, of a culture of people who had no control of their destiny except to conform and live.
The area that would become Reno, Nevada, started out in as Fuller's Crossing, named after Charles William Fuller, a settler who claimed a small piece of land on the south bank of the Truckee River.
From there he built a bridge over the river and a small hotel. In , Fuller sold the bridge and his hotel to Myron Lake, who quickly renamed the area Lake's Crossing. Lake's Crossing became an important point between northern California and the nearby Comstock Lode — the first major silver discovery in the United States.
At the time, Lake was the sole landowner, but that would soon change. In , the Central Pacific Railroad crossed the Sierra Nevada mountain range and began laying tracks in the region.
Central Pacific construction engineer Joseph M. Graham drove the first stake in surveying the new town April 1, The first train to go from Sacramento, California — the transcontinental railroad's western starting point — to Reno arrived June 18, An agreement was reached between Lake and the railroad that a new town would be created at the crossing.
A new name seemed only fitting, and so Lake's Crossing officially became known as Reno — after Gen. The town soon became an important commercial center on the transcontinental railroad and a transfer point for the immense wealth coming out of the Comstock Lode. Agriculture — particularly cattle and alfalfa hay — made constant demands on Reno's rail services, creating an immediate economic mainstay for the town.
Despite the boom-and-bust cycle of mining, Reno leveraged its role as a transportation hub and grew into the state's largest town. As a result, Reno was a financial and industrial hub as the 20th century dawned. The town was a bustling small metropolis with fashionable Victorian homes and commercial and municipal buildings. Few towns can claim to have been custom-designed by a railroad as Sparks was.
When Southern Pacific Railroad succeeded Central Pacific as the new owner of the main line across northern Nevada, it decided to realign the tracks. The new route bypassed the town of Wadsworth, which for 40 years had controlled the roundhouse and maintenance facilities of Central Pacific.
Since the new alignment was too far from Wadsworth, Southern Pacific made a rather startling offer to its employees. In , it purchased a large tract of swamp-like land near its newly built railyard and using railcars and scores of workers, spread dirt and gravel to build up the land. To make the deal more enticing, it offered to pick up and move — free of charge — every house in Wadsworth and reassemble it in this new town.
Harriman, then president of Southern Pacific. The entire city, schools and parks grew up around the rail yard. Sparks is still known as Rail City, and the rail yard continues its vital role in the entire valley's economy. A few years ago, along with expanding the tunnel size over Donner Pass to accommodate double-stack cars, Union Pacific constructed a third line in the yard to help accommodate traffic coming from the west. Sparks is a locomotive and crew change point.
Near the turn of the 20th century, the section of the original Central Pacific Railroad that ran across the mile desert was abandoned in favor of a new line to the south of the Hot Springs Mountains.
While the route was longer, it eliminated the need for helper locomotives over White Plains Hill, and therefore made for a faster, more efficient operation. This new route helped usher in the founding of Fernley. The town was established in as an agricultural and ranching community.
As such, the federal Bureau of Reclamation's Newlands Project provided for the building of a mile canal — the Truckee Canal — to carry water from the Truckee River through Fernley and ultimately into the Lahontan Reservoir. In Fernley's post office was open. Fernley remained an important junction until the Modoc line trains were routed to Winnemucca, Nevada, via the Western Pacific Railroad in In December , grading started for the new Fernley Depot, which was completed in August The depot was in use until the Southern Pacific Railroad closed it in September The depot was purchased by the Fernley Preservation Society in January and was moved to its present location on Main Street in September Earlier, in , Englishman George Lovelock settled in the area, attracted by the fertile soil that made the area suitable for agriculture.
He built a small stage station there, which eventually became a station on the Central Pacific Railroad. Lovelock is situated in a valley with the Humboldt Range to the east and the Trinity and Seven Troughs ranges to the north and west. In the s, this valley was known to settlers as Big Meadows because of its abundant grass and water. It also was a favorite resting spot for folks traveling to California and Oregon.
Passengers and freight were transferred here at Promontory, which was known to be a wild town with gambling, looting and "sporting women". When the junction moved to Ogden in Promontory became primarily a helper station, housing mostly railroad workers and their families.
Are these the original locomotives? They are within one-quarter inch of actual size, and are fully functional in all respects. What happened to the original locomotives? This size and type of engine was outmoded and under-powered by the turn of the century. There eventually came a time when they just were not worth repairing any more. The N o. Were the original engines really that shiny and colorful?
They were built during the Victorian Age, and reflected the designs and craftsmanship of the era. The locomotives were both the workhorse and advertising of the railroads. Can we ride the trains? We have no passenger coaches, thus there is no place for anyone to ride. Vocabulary Note: a train is a locomotive pulling cars or rolling stock. Without the cars it is not a train, it is simply a locomotive or engine.
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