Trailrider #896 Posted May 10, 2019 Share Posted May 10, 2019 Locomotives from the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads met at Promontory Point, marking completion of the Trans-Continental railroad. Dignitaries from both lines participated in a ceremony in which a golden spike was driven into a laurel crosstie. Actually, Leland Stanford missed the spike with the hammer, but the telegrapher tapped out, "Done". It is now possible to travel across country nearly non-stop. (Well, actually, you had to take a ferry across the Missouri River from Council Bluffs, Iowa to Omaha, Nebraska, and you wind up at Oakland, California, and take another ferry across to San Francisco. The bridge across the Missouri wasn't built for nearly a decade.) But the settlement of the West was made much easier. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pat Riot Posted May 10, 2019 Share Posted May 10, 2019 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yul Lose Posted May 10, 2019 Share Posted May 10, 2019 Stephen Ambrose wrote a great book about the building of the railroad, Nothing Like It In The World: The men who built the transcontinental railroad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984 Posted May 10, 2019 Share Posted May 10, 2019 The tracks went to Oakland and one needed to take a ferry to get to S.F.? Was that because of Mountains? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pat Riot Posted May 10, 2019 Share Posted May 10, 2019 40 minutes ago, Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984 said: The tracks went to Oakland and one needed to take a ferry to get to S.F.? Was that because of Mountains? Probably. I also think they didn’t want to deal with the Sacramento River Delta. Check this map out: http://www.cprr.org/Museum/Maps/_crofutt_1870_map.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trailrider #896 Posted May 11, 2019 Author Share Posted May 11, 2019 3 hours ago, Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984 said: The tracks went to Oakland and one needed to take a ferry to get to S.F.? Was that because of Mountains? More'n likely because trains don't tread water too well, and they really didn't have the technology to build a bay bridge just then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Utah Bob #35998 Posted May 11, 2019 Share Posted May 11, 2019 https://www.9news.com/video/news/local/next/the-transcontinental-railroad-was-built-in-less-time-than-rtds-g-line-to-arvada/73-1dd34863-bbba-4b84-8de2-6436e6361cbd Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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