HOW IT ALL BEGAN - All Aboard: The Complete North American Train Travel Guide - page 8

A Mobile Society Is Created
America's first railroad was the Baltimore & Ohio (B&O), which
started service in 1830 and immediately captured the imagina-
tion of the country. That's hardly surprising. Up to that time, no
American had ever traveled faster than a horse could run. Almost
overnight, ordinary people were traveling for greater distances at
higher speeds than had ever been possible. Other railroads fol-
lowed on the heels of the B&O.
For the average American in the early 19th century, it all took
some getting used to. Individual families and entire communi-
ties had always been pretty much self-sufficient. The railroads
changed all that in a matter of a few years, first by linking towns,
then states, and finally the entire continent. Suddenly Americans
had mobility; almost anyone could go almost anywhere. It's an
interesting paradox that while railroads were bringing Americans
together as one people, they also made it possible for the country
itself to expand.
By the mid-19th century, people were heading west by the
thousands, chasing after the gold that was discovered in Califor-
nia in 1848 or just looking for some land of their own. But how-
ever efficiently the railroads may have linked the North, South,
and East, they could only take people halfway into the great
American West—just as far as Omaha, Nebraska.
The Biggest Construction Project Ever
There had been talk about extending the railroad to the West
Coast for some time, but the men who proposed it were largely
written off as fools. It was indeed a huge, daunting project, argu-
ably one of the largest and most ambitious engineering projects
ever attempted. Furthermore, not everyone thought California
was the promised land, even if the transcontinental railroad did