Download or read book Nothing Like It In the World written by Stephen E. Ambrose and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2001-11-06 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the men who build the transcontinental railroad in the 1860's.
Download or read book Empire Express written by David Haward Bain and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2000-09-01 with total page 1432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the Civil War, the building of the transcontinental railroad was the nineteenth century's most transformative event. Beginning in 1842 with a visionary's dream to span the continent with twin bands of iron, Empire Express captures three dramatic decades in which the United States effectively doubled in size, fought three wars, and began to discover a new national identity. From self--made entrepreneurs such as the Union Pacific's Thomas Durant and era--defining figures such as President Lincoln to the thousands of laborers whose backbreaking work made the railroad possible, this extraordinary narrative summons an astonishing array of voices to give new dimension not only to this epic endeavor but also to the culture, political struggles, and social conflicts of an unforgettable period in American history.
Download or read book The Building of the Transcontinental Railroad written by Peggy Caravantes and published by Momentum. This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gives readers a behind-the-scenes look at the building of the Transcontinental Railroad. Additional features include a table of contents, a Fast Facts spread, critical-thinking questions, primary source quotes and accompanying source notes, a phonetic glossary, an index, and sources for further research.
Download or read book Ghosts of Gold Mountain written by Gordon H. Chang and published by Mariner Books. This book was released on 2019 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Guangdong -- Gold Mountain -- Central Pacific -- Foothills -- The High Sierra -- The Summit -- The Strike -- Truckee -- The Golden Spike -- Beyond Promontory.
Download or read book Ten Mile Day written by Mary Ann Fraser and published by Square Fish. This book was released on 2016-08-02 with total page 81 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On May 10, 1869, the final spike in North America's first transcontinental railroad was driven home at Promontory Summit, Utah. Illustrated with the author's carefully researched, evocative paintings, here is a great adventure story in the history of the American West--the day Charles Crocker staked $10,000 on the crews' ability to lay a world record ten miles of track in a single, Ten Mile Day.
Download or read book Railroad Fever written by Monica Halpern and published by National Geographic Kids. This book was released on 2004 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a history of the building of the transcontinental railroad and its effects on American life. By the 1840s, daring Americans were trickling westward to begin a new life in the great wide open. When gold was discovered in 1848, the promise of riches drew people by the thousands out to California. But the journey was slow and dangerous, since the best ways of travelling were by wagon and on foot. During the "railroad fever" of the 1830s, thousands of miles of track were laid, mostly throughout the Northeast and the South. Few had dreamt of extending this new travel westward-but all it takes is a few. Abraham Lincoln signed the Pacific Railroad Act in 1862, allowing for the start of the first transcontinental railroad. Though construction problems and hard times confronted them, American workers, Chinese immigrants, and former slaves pounded away through the rough geography of the western U.S., paving a path for the new train. A day in the life of a railroad worker was not an easy one. The work was backbreaking; the conditions were terrible; and workers were often faced with attack from Native Americans. The building of the railroad turned into a great race between two companies, the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific, to see who could finish their part of the railroad faster. The company that got farthest stood to make the most money. The "great race" turned into a national pastime-with reports of progress dominating the news. Railroad Fever illuminates the struggles of the railroad worker, the anger of the Plains Indians, and the many changes in both American life and geography that were prompted by the railroad. The completion of the transcontinental railroad left empty boomtowns across the country, changed the ethnic face of America, and, of course, created a new exciting and fast way of travel. Like the other titles in the Crossroads America series, Railroad Fever is illustrated with period paintings, drawings, and photographs. Also included are a glossary and an index.
Download or read book Full Steam Ahead written by Rhoda Blumberg and published by Scholastic Incorporated. This book was released on 1996 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 was signed, it allowed one railroad company to lay tracks east from California and another to lay tracks west from the Mississippi. When the transcontinental link was completed on May 10, 1869, it changed America forever. This is a description of every aspect of the building of the transcontinental railroad.
Download or read book The Milwaukee Road s Western Extension written by Stanley W. Johnson and published by Museum of North Idaho Publications. This book was released on 2007 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Milwaukee Road's Western Extension is a fascinating story of the 1905-1915 building of the first through rail line between Chicago and Puget Sound. It was a daring decision that resulted in a remarkable accomplishment. It is a tale of unusual human interaction at all levels - full of details about the people and events involved. It tells of the face-to-face personal and corporate struggle for power by America's railroad barons; the courage and fortitude of pioneering civil engineer surveyors who pushed their way through literally thousands of miles of virgin wilderness in search of a workable route. It looks over the shoulders of hundreds of planners who attacked the unbelievably difficult problems of supplying 10,000 workers strung out over 1800 miles of planned right-of-way, devoid of roads or towns. The reader is taken along and offered the opportunity to observe these laborers as they erect steel trestles three-hundred feet above the forest floor; bore tunnels through almost 20 miles of mountain rock; build new bridges across the Missouri, the Yellowstone, the Columbia and a hundred other rivers and streams while they struggled to stay alive in the face of stifling heat, devastating floods, life-threatening snow and cold, winds of hurricane strength and the presence of typhus that frequented their new route across the Dakotas, Montana, Idaho and Washington. The reader learns why and how new construction machines came to virgin wilderness for the first time; discovers how the work crews lived; where they played and slept, what they ate, and sometimes how they died. Reading the book is like taking a trip into the beginning of the 20th century when men like Teddy Roosevelt, the Rockefellers, Alva Edison and John Westinghouse were introducing the country to new ways of living and doing business - better medical care, electricity in every day life, and a new freedom - the freedom to travel without pause or discomfort all the way from the beaches of Lake Michigan to the clear waters of Puget Sound. Based upon details and broad documentation gleaned from the records of the time, the story is one of fact rather than supposition - a broad tribute to the men who built the railroad. It is a saga of great accomplishment and remarkable people.
Download or read book Iron Muse written by Glenn Willumson and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-11-10 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The construction of the transcontinental railroad (1865–1869) marked a milestone in United States history, symbolizing both the joining of the country’s two coasts and the taming of its frontier wilderness by modern technology. But it was through the power of images—and especially the photograph—that the railroad attained its iconic status. Iron Muse provides a unique look at the production, distribution, and publication of images of the transcontinental railroad: from their use as an official record by the railroad corporations, to their reproduction in the illustrated press and travel guides, and finally to their adaptation to direct sales and albums in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Tracing the complex relationships and occasional conflicts between photographer, publisher, and curator as they crafted the photographs’ different meanings over time, Willumson provides a comprehensive portrayal of the creation and evolution of an important slice of American visual culture.
Download or read book A Great and Shining Road written by John Hoyt Williams and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1996-01-01 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads were officially joined on May 10, 1869 at Promontory Point, Utah, with the driving of a golden spike. This historic ceremony marked the completion of the first transcontinental railroad. Spanning the Sierras and the “Great American Desert,” the tracks connected San Francisco to Council Bluffs, Iowa. A Great and Shining Road is the exciting story of a mammoth feat that called forth entrepreneurial daring, financial wizardry, technological innovation, political courage and chicanery, and the heroism of thousands of laborers.
Download or read book When Railroads Were New written by Charles Frederick Carter and published by . This book was released on 1909 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Living the California Dream written by Alison Rose Jefferson and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2020 Miriam Matthews Ethnic History Award from the Los Angeles City Historical Society Alison Rose Jefferson examines how African Americans pioneered America’s “frontier of leisure” by creating communities and business projects in conjunction with their growing population in Southern California during the nation’s Jim Crow era.
Download or read book Railroaded written by Richard White and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2012-03-27 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize "A powerful book, crowded with telling details and shrewd observations." —Michael Kazin, New York Times Book Review The transcontinental railroads were the first corporate behemoths. Their attempts to generate profits from proliferating debt sparked devastating economic panics. Their dependence on public largesse drew them into the corridors of power, initiating new forms of corruption. Their operations rearranged space and time, remade the landscape of the West, and opened new ways of life and work. Their discriminatory rates sparked a new antimonopoly politics. The transcontinentals were pivotal actors in the making of modern America, but the triumphal myths of the golden spike, Robber Barons larger than life, and an innovative capitalism all die here. Instead we have a new vision of the Gilded Age, often darkly funny, that shows history to be rooted in failure as well as success.
Download or read book Gateway to Freedom The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad written by Eric Foner and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2015-01-19 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The dramatic story of fugitive slaves and the antislavery activists who defied the law to help them reach freedom. More than any other scholar, Eric Foner has influenced our understanding of America's history. Now, making brilliant use of extraordinary evidence, the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian once again reconfigures the national saga of American slavery and freedom. A deeply entrenched institution, slavery lived on legally and commercially even in the northern states that had abolished it after the American Revolution. Slaves could be found in the streets of New York well after abolition, traveling with owners doing business with the city's major banks, merchants, and manufacturers. New York was also home to the North’s largest free black community, making it a magnet for fugitive slaves seeking refuge. Slave catchers and gangs of kidnappers roamed the city, seizing free blacks, often children, and sending them south to slavery. To protect fugitives and fight kidnappings, the city's free blacks worked with white abolitionists to organize the New York Vigilance Committee in 1835. In the 1840s vigilance committees proliferated throughout the North and began collaborating to dispatch fugitive slaves from the upper South, Washington, and Baltimore, through Philadelphia and New York, to Albany, Syracuse, and Canada. These networks of antislavery resistance, centered on New York City, became known as the underground railroad. Forced to operate in secrecy by hostile laws, courts, and politicians, the city’s underground-railroad agents helped more than 3,000 fugitive slaves reach freedom between 1830 and 1860. Until now, their stories have remained largely unknown, their significance little understood. Building on fresh evidence—including a detailed record of slave escapes secretly kept by Sydney Howard Gay, one of the key organizers in New York—Foner elevates the underground railroad from folklore to sweeping history. The story is inspiring—full of memorable characters making their first appearance on the historical stage—and significant—the controversy over fugitive slaves inflamed the sectional crisis of the 1850s. It eventually took a civil war to destroy American slavery, but here at last is the story of the courageous effort to fight slavery by "practical abolition," person by person, family by family.
Download or read book The Chinese in America written by Iris Chang and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2004-03-30 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A quintessiantially American story chronicling Chinese American achievement in the face of institutionalized racism by the New York Times bestselling author of The Rape of Nanking In an epic story that spans 150 years and continues to the present day, Iris Chang tells of a people’s search for a better life—the determination of the Chinese to forge an identity and a destiny in a strange land and, often against great obstacles, to find success. She chronicles the many accomplishments in America of Chinese immigrants and their descendents: building the infrastructure of their adopted country, fighting racist and exclusionary laws and anti-Asian violence, contributing to major scientific and technological advances, expanding the literary canon, and influencing the way we think about racial and ethnic groups. Interweaving political, social, economic, and cultural history, as well as the stories of individuals, Chang offers a bracing view not only of what it means to be Chinese American, but also of what it is to be American.
Download or read book Connecting the Coasts written by Norma Lewis and published by Capstone. This book was released on 2014-07-01 with total page 33 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Examines the Transcontinental Railroad by discussing why it was needed and the immediate and lasting effects it had on the nation as well as the people and places involved."--
Download or read book The Last Rail written by Darice Bailer and published by . This book was released on 1996-09 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Railroad Hall at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, Lucy tries to take a photograph of her friends only to find she has become Andrew Russell, preparing to take the famous 1869 photograph of the driving of the golden spike into the last rail of the first Transcontinental Railroad. As she works, she listens to amazing accounts of this engineering feat that linked by rail the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
