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The First Transcontinental Railroad (Part 1)

© Elizabeth Gibson

In 1818, Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton, then editor of the St. Louis Enquirer, wrote a series of editorials proposing a network of roads and canals to connect the Missouri and Columbia Rivers. This was the first idea of a transcontinental transportation system. Besides the economic benefit to the coast and the states in between, promoters hoped to capture European and Asian trade, especially China and Japan. What the U.S. government was more interested in, however, was final subjugation of the Indians. It figured the railroad would hasten this along. The government also wanted to reduce the cost of sending mail and supplies to the west.

It wasn't until 1853, that Jefferson Davis, Secretary of War, authorized army engineers to explore the five best routes to the Pacific. No one could agree on an eastern terminus because whoever it was would gain such an economic and political advantage. They also couldn't agree on a route. The Southerners didn't want the route to go through the north, and vice-versa. All routes were viable, but the southern route on the 32nd parallel would be the cheapest.

Instead the final route was surveyed by Theodore H. Judah, an engineer in the Sacramento Valley. Part of this route was used by the Bidwell-Bartleson party that traveled through Utah and Nevada in 1841. Judah was obsessed with building a transcontinental railroad and convinced merchants Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins, and Collis P. Huntington, forever known as The Big Four, to invest in a railroad. The Big Four incorporated the Central Pacific Railroad Company of California, on June 28, 1861.

On July 1, 1862, President Lincoln signed the Railroad Act of 1862, which authorized the Union Pacific to build a railroad from the Missouri River to California, or until it met the Central Pacific. Major General John A. Dix was elected president of the Union Pacific, but he never took office. So Vice President Thomas C. Durant called the shots. The government also authorized the Central Pacific to push beyond the borders of California to meet the Union Pacific. Congress fixed the longitude, and Lincoln picked Omaha as the eastern terminus. Bonds were sold to finance the railroad. Tragically, Judah, who started it all, died in 1863, without seeing his dream come true.

In 1863, the Central Pacific broke ground at Sacramento in January. The Union Pacific broke ground at the Missouri River bluffs near Omaha in December. Both railroads had problems right away. Material costs were high due to war-time shortages. There was also a labor shortage. Investors chose to buy into war industries instead since profit was more immediate. More help from the government was needed.

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