Railroad Trails
The importance of the railroad to economic development in the West can hardly be over estimated. Once a train line was established the land along the train tracks changed dramatically and quickly. People and goods could travel in relative comfort and safety and at a here-to-fore unimaginable speed across the vast expanses of the area. Cattle moved to market, minerals were transported to the eastern banks, new settlers moved into the area on trains, and visitors could quickly and easily arrive at their destination. In the twenty-five years between 1865 and 1890 rail lines in the country west of the Mississippi increased from 3272 miles of track to 72,463 miles, binding together the vast area of farmland, prairie, desert, mountains and canyons.
The coming of the railroad to the region marked a continuation of federal sponsorship of westward expansion and routes of travel. The difficulties and expenses of building the railroad required federal subsidies and assistance. Imagine the struggle of bridging countless canyons with trestles sturdy enough to support railway cars and their contents, laying tracks of iron and wood over miles of terrain devoid of trees or cities, feeding and sheltering an army of laborers, working through both winter and summer, in mountains and deserts, and you begin to understand the railroad builders task.
The first rail connection between the East Coast and California joined the Union Pacific to the Central Pacific on May 10, 1869 at Promontory Point, Utah, creating linked rail line from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Instead of six weeks travel across the West in a stagecoach, the coast to coast journey now could be made in five or six days. While the driving of the Golden Spike marked the bridging of the continent by rail the nation's railway network was hardly complete.
Not being on a rail line could spell economic disaster for a town. When the Union Pacific chose the route over gentle South Pass as thus across southern Wyoming, Denver businessmen quickly built the Denver Pacific line to connect with the new trans-continental railroad at Cheyenne. As the Denver people knew, communities without a rail line suffered economically. The construction of new trunk lines expanded the railroads towards other communities, linking them to the rest of the region and the country as a whole.
Eva and Oscar Vieregg on Back of Railcar Courtesy Stuhr Museum of the Prarie Pioneer
The relative ease of train travel compared to the stagecoach enabled a new industry to emerge—tourism in the romantic Wild West grew with the lengthening tracks. Tourists made the trek across the continent, stopping to visit various exotic locations and natural wonders, or traveled locally into the mountains on holiday excursions. This aspect of modern life entered popular culture in numerous ways, music, for example. A song cover from 1910 emphasizes the power and speed of the train, compared to the hazards of travel in the previous music cover of nearly forty years before. The 1930s brought the advent of the modern streamliner and ever-more luxurious travel. But this same decade ushered in air travel, which, in tandem with the Interstate Highway system, would spell the end of mass transit by train by the 1970s.
Notes:
O. Winther, The Transportation Frontier, p. 103
