Which part of the country had the most railroads in 1860?
By 1860, 30,000 miles (49,000 km) of railroad tracks had been laid, with 21,300 miles (34,000 km) concentrated in the northeast.
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Most railroads before 1860 were in the east. Most of the land that the Central Pacific crossed was flat. When barbed wire was introduced into the West, cattle were no longer able to cross open prairie. Nearly half of the United States was farmed by 1900.
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Northern foundries began to experiment with stronger and more durable iron products such as steel. But the southern foundries had difficulty purchasing the necessary supplies for diligent upkeep of their rail lines, and as a result, the infrastructure of southern rail lines gradually crumbled.
By 1850, more than 9,000 miles of railroad were in operation. In these early years, railroads provided a means for previously inaccessible areas to be developed; for mineral, timber and agricultural products to get to market; and for the developed and undeveloped areas of a growing nation to be bound together.
Soon joining the B & O as operating lines were the Mohawk and Hudson, opened in September 1830, the Saratoga, opened in July 1832, and the South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company, whose 136 miles of track, completed to Hamburg, constituted, in 1833, the longest steam railroad in the world.
The South had always been less enthusiastic about the railroad industry than the North; its citizens preferred an agrarian living and left the mechanical jobs to men from the Northern states. The railroads existed, they believed, solely to get cotton to the ports.