Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
America Starts Moving by Rail
By 1865, when the Civil War ended, there were some 30,000
miles of track in the country. During the next 25 years, steel rails
spread out all over America until, by 1890, there was well over
200,000 miles of track running from sea to shining sea.
The federal government encouraged the spread of the rail-
roads by giving them land—not just rights-of-way on which
to lay their tracks but land adjacent to the tracks too, which
totaled millions upon millions of acres. The railroads sold this
land at very low prices, actually giving it away in some cases.
Men called colonization agents were hired by the railroads to
recruit families from the industrial East Coast. Many railroads
actually operated what were called immigrant trains—which car-
ried entire families, including their personal belongings and even
their livestock—from the eastern United States into the newly
opened areas. Thousands of people took advantage of this new
opportunity, and as word spread across the Atlantic, European
immigrants joined the flood of new settlers.
The railroads were eager, almost desperate, to encourage this
resettlement, because if they were to succeed, people—
lots
of peo-
ple—had to settle wherever tracks had been laid. It worked too,
because the supplies these settlers needed to start and sustain their
new lives on the American frontier were brought to them by the
railroads. As they became established farmers and ranchers, they
sent their wheat, corn, and cattle to eastern markets by rail as well.
In less than a quarter of a century, the railroads were pros-
pering, and so were the cities and towns they served. Chicago
became a thriving center of business and trade, not coinciden-
tally because the eleven different railroads serving the city made
it the busiest railroad center in the world. Factories full of new
employees sprang up to process the cattle, grain, lumber, and
other raw materials being delivered to Chicago by rail from the
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