The Mysteries of History (June 4 Edition)
Express Train Shrinks the U.S.
1876 — Express Train Chugs Across the Country in Half a Week
image generated using Bing Image Creator
Many significant events occurred in the U.S. in 1876, the Country’s Centennial, including The Battle of Greasy Grass (“Custer’s Last Stand”), a controversial contested Presidential election between Rutherford Hayes and Samuel Tilden (Hayes won, but possibly as the result of a shady cigar-smoke-filled back room deal), the invention of the Telephone, and the publication of one of Mark Twain’s greatest novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
Another pivotal event, which occurred on this very date that year, was the arrival of an express train in San Francisco that had crossed the continent in a scarcely-to-be-believed 83 hours (slightly less than half a week).
Seven years after the transcontinental railroad was completed at Promontory Summit in Utah Territory (Utah didn’t become a State until 1896), when the two track-building teams working toward each other met — one working its way West from Omaha, Nebraska, and the other working its way east from Sacramento, California — passengers crossed the country in comfort in far less time than it previously took to span the continent. Until then, it took months to make that trip by horse, mule, or wagon, and also months to reach the opposite coast by ship.
Questions: If you had been alive in 1876, would you have wanted to travel by train from Omaha to Sacramento? How much would you have been willing to pay? How much was a first-class ticket, and what is its equivalent today? Why is rail travel in the U.S. comparatively rare today (with far more people traveling by plane or car)?
