Suite101 e-Book
Rails Across a Nation
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Amber “Jessie” Buchanan, My favorite leading lady and the best of The Boxcar Children Table of Contents
Introduction Long before the first tie of the Transcendental Railroad was put into place politicians and promoters were busy, as early as 1824, dreaming up a great railway that would connect the Atlantic to the Pacific. But most folks considered it an impossible idea that if it happened at all it would be far in the future. “After all,” some speculated, “how you gonna’ get one of them thar engines up and over those mountains way out west, the Rockies, what Mountain Men are callin’ the Shining Mountains.” They had an excellent point--except they were badly mistaken. While an American Transcendental Railroad was still in the dreaming stage, in England, in 1825, the Stockton and Darlington opened for business, which surely fueled some imaginations in America. However, the general American consciences remained that a rail reaching from shore to shore just couldn’t be done. Fortunately, there were some who disagreed and never let the dream die. In 1828, the Baltimore and Ohio began construction in the east. The following year, in Pennsylvania, the first steam locomotive in America made a trial run but the engine, too heavy for the track, did not make it. The whole plan was derailed until 1830, when service began on the Baltimore and Ohio. This time, horses provided the pulling power. Then the Best Friend of Charleston successfully pulled a string of cars down the tracks of the South Carolina Railroad. So now there was some railroad transportation, both in the North and the South. Still, the only means of reaching the west was either up the Missouri River by boat or over land by horse. Both means of transport were dangerous. But, in spite of the hazards, folks were looking westward. Because of the tales the mountain men were relating folks were having visions of wide-open western spaces to sink their plows into and publishers were pushing the idea of a Transcontinental Railroad, often printing erroneous information. Then in the mid-1830s Doctor Marcus Whitman and the Reverend Henry Spalding headed west, all the way to Oregon Country. In itself, the trek was no more than what the mountain men had been doing for quiet a few years. The difference was that Whitman and Spalding took their wives along, proving an import point--that women could make it all the way to Oregon. Whitman even pulled a wagon most of the way. There would, now, be no holding back the floodtide of westward expansion no matter the means of transportation. The Reverend Parker, who had also been one of the early missionaries to head west, even published a book touting the idea of a railroad to the Pacific. His printed conscience was that there would “be no difficulty in the way of constructing a railroad from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.” Parker knew better. It’s too bad he wasn’t around later to personally pass on this bit of information to the Chinese laborers who were hoisted many feet up sheer mountainsides in the Sierras to place dynamite charges for blasting out tunnels, sometimes blowing themselves to reside eternally with their ancient ancestors. As the 1840s rolled toward the 1850s folks were already settling in Oregon and some few putting down roots in California. Then, in 1849, gold was discovered in California. At first it was mostly men who were beating a path to the west, seeking metallic riches. Soon after, it was a regular circus along the Oregon Trail as long lines of covered wagons, filled with men, women, grandparents and children of all ages, were arriving in both Oregon and California. It took them months, after leaving St. Louis, to reach their destinations if, in deed, they arrived at all. And the dream as well as a need for a Transcontinental Railroad was more alive now than it had ever been. |
