Travelin' By Train

1 Minute Travel Time

To enable people to get from point A to point B - coach companies were set up. They were also used to transport gold and mail across America. It was a very slow and dangerous journey across the Plains as stage coaches could not travel very fast. From the 1850's onwards the US government encouraged railroad companies to build rail lines across the country. The companies were given large amounts of land where they built their lines and then sold the land on to the settlers, who got there on the railroads.
It was not an easy job by any means to build these railroads. There was, no heavy machinery and most of the hard work had to be done by hand. The Native Americans didn't make it any easier by attacking 'the workers' , as they did not want the railroad to go ahead. Thousands of workers were brought in from china by the Central pacific Company who were building the line eastward from California. In May 1869 at a place called Promontory which is in Utah the line that was built by the Central Pacific Company joined the line that was being built westward by the union Pacific Company. The East and West coasts of America became one.