On January 24th, 1848, James Marshall discovered what he believed to be Gold dust in the bed of a creek right outside his mill. He brought this sample of the shiny material up to Ft. Sutter in Sacramento, where it was deemed indeed to be gold, and thus the migration of massive amounts of people we call the gold rush began. In two years after the discovery of gold, the population of California was 90.000 people. At the time of the discovery California was relatively uninhabited by Americans. The United States had finally realized its dream of a country reaching from sea to shining sea, but now that the lands were there, the United State

Due to his efforts, Judah convinced Congress to pass the Pacific Railroad Act on June 20th 1862, calling for the creation of two competing railroad companies to start at opposite ends of the route and meet in the middle. The two companies created were the Central Pacific Railroad Co., and the Union Pacific Railroad Co. Since the Central Pacific Railroad Co. was already a privately owned company it wasn't as heavily regulated as the Union Pacific Railroad Co. was, which was a government formed company whose specific purpose was to build the eastern leg of the railroad. The accepted route of the railroad was from Omaha, Nebraska in the East, to the Bay area in the west. The federal government granted the two companies aid in the way of United States 6% bonds that had to be paid back with interest beginning 30 years after the completion of the railroad. Yet, due to the Civil War that was raging at this time, the bonds held little confidence in the market and thus never sold at par, thus depreciating the aid from the very beginning. The government also awarded the companies a right-of-way extending two hundred feet on either side of the tracks, and five alternate square miles of public land on either side of the line, or 6,400 acres per mile of track. Both Companies were also to give priority to the transportation of government mails, troops, and supplies on the line. The Union pacific was obligated to build a hundred miles in the first 2 years and another hundred miles each succeeding year thereafter. The Central Pacific, due to the mountainous terrain was only obligated to build half as much as the Union Pacific over the same prescribed amount of time. The act also specified that the two companies would be confiscated if the railroad were not completed by July 1, 1874. The construction of the railroad and the subsequent telegraph line that went up along side it, cost the government nothing as it was only loaning its credit and not its money.

By the end of 1867, the Union Pacific had laid 300 miles of track, while the Central had laid less than 80 miles. By the spring of 1869 the two railroads were racing towards each other and they eventually began to build track side by side one another going in opposite directions. It was then that they realized the dream had been accomplished and that they had to be joined. The designated meeting place of the two railroads was determined to be Promontory Point, Utah. On My 10, 1869, two trains converged on Promontory Point, Stamford on a train called Jupiter from the west and Durant on a run of the mill train labeled Engine 119 from the east. The heads of the two companies drove in 4 spikes into the final set of rails, two gold, one silver, and one that was a mixture between gold, silver, and iron. The work was completed in six years, a whole four years of schedule resulting in a reward of 21 million acres.

By 1850 there were 9,021 miles of functioning track in the United States, but nothing that connected the east coast and the west coast. During the 1850's, an average of 2,160 miles of new track was laid every year. With the increase in the formation of functioning track throughout the 1850's, the development of locomotives that are more powerful and more stable cars permitted engineering feats that seemed impossible a decade earlier. Railroad fever clearly had the nation in its grips and it was just a matter of time before a railroad that crossed the continent would be built. A New York businessman, Asa Whitney, was the first to propose the idea of a transcontinental railroad in 1845. He proposed a route along the northern border we share with Canada. Before the gold rush, he was

Some common words found in the essay are:
Union Pacific, Americans United, Panama California, San Francisco, Promontory Stamford, Civil War, Asa Whitney, Pacific Railroad, Railroad Co, Curtis Act, transcontinental railroad, central pacific, union pacific, pacific railroad, pacific railroad co, discovery gold, gold rush, railroad co, miles track, bridge nation, railroad company, central pacific railroad, stock railroad company, 40 miles track, union pacific railroad,
Approximate Word count = 2478
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)