Who were the two companies that build the Transcontinental Railroad and why did they decide to build from two different directions?

The Central Pacific Railroad Company started construction of the Transcontinental Railroad in Sacramento, California, while the Union Pacific Railroad Company started near the Iowa-Nebraska border. Both companies were promised vast amounts of land and government bonds for each mile of track laid down on the railroad.



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In 1862 Congress passed the Pacific Railroad Acts which designated the 32nd parallel as the initial transcontinental route and gave huge grants of lands for rights-of-way. The legislation authorized two railroad companies, the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific, to construct the lines.

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Beginning in 1863, the Union Pacific, employing more than 8,000 Irish, German, and Italian immigrants, built west from Omaha, NE; the Central Pacific, whose workforce included over 10,000 Chinese laborers, built eastward from Sacramento, CA.

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He told President Andrew Johnson that the Chinese were indispensable to building the railroad: They were “quiet, peaceable, patient, industrious and economical.” In a stockholder report, Stanford described construction as a “herculean task” and said it had been accomplished thanks to the Chinese, who made up 90% of the ...

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While Chinese workers dominated the railroad workforce in the West, most eastern and southern railroad companies relied on Black Americans to do the back-breaking construction work.

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The Central Pacific and the Union Pacific were the two companies charged to build the Transcontinental Railroad. Although the government funded and approved the building of the Transcontinental Railroad before the Civil War, the main construction of the railway began after the Civil War around 1865.

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The Railroad Act of 1862 put government support behind the transcontinental railroad and helped create the Union Pacific Railroad, which subsequently joined with the Central Pacific at Promontory, Utah, on May 10, 1869, and signaled the linking of the continent.

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Congress passed the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 on July 1, 1862, and the Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR) and the Union Pacific Railroad were authorized by Congress.

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Many workers contributed to the construction of railroads. On the East Coast, Native Americans, recently freed black people, and white laborers worked on the railroads. On the West Coast, many of the railroad workers were Chinese immigrants. New Jersey issued the first railroad charter in 1815.

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pacific Railway Acts of 1862 and 1864 gave large amounts of western land to the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads. Work began on Transcontinental Railroad in 1862.

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The story goes that on May 10, 1869, the Central Pacific Railroad's tracks from the west were connected to the Union Pacific Railroad's tracks from the east in Promontory Summit, Utah.

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A train route across the United States, finished in 1869. It was the project of two railroad companies: the Union Pacific built from the east, and the Central Pacific built from the west.

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The major groups of immigrants that worked on the transcontinental railroad were from Ireland and China. All immigrants working on the transcontinental railroad were treated equally and with high standards.

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“All workers on the railroad were 'other',” said Liebhold. “On the west, there were Chinese workers, out east were Irish and Mormon workers were in the center. All these groups are outside the classical American mainstream.”

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North America's four major rail networks — Norfolk Southern, CSX, Union Pacific and Canadian National — all own lines that were built and operated with slave labor.

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For all the adversity they suffered, the Union Pacific and Central Pacific workers were able to finish the railroad–laying nearly 2,000 miles of track–by 1869, ahead of schedule and under budget. Journeys that had taken months by wagon train or weeks by boat now took only days.

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The number of Chinese workers on CP payrolls began increasing by the shipload. Several thousand Chinese men had signed on by the end of that year; the number rose to a high of 12,000 in 1868, comprising at least 80% of the Central Pacific workforce.

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Locomotive engineers. Rail yard engineers, dinkey operators, and hostlers. Railroad brake, signal, and switch operators and locomotive firers. Railroad conductors and yardmasters.

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The construction of the Transcontinental Railroad was an engineering feat of human endurance, with the western leg built largely by thousands of immigrant Chinese laborers. The building of the Transcontinental Railroad relied on the labor of thousands of migrant workers, including Chinese, Irish, and Mormons workers.

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