The transcontinental railroad
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Discusses the history of railroads in the United States, focusing on the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad. The construction of the Transcontinental Railroad was an extraordinary feat of engineering for its time. This book tells the story of the railroad and shows how the technical challenges and huge scale of the task were overcome by the hard labor of thousands of workers. It looks at the background to the project: an expanding nation hungry for land and the powerful partnership of business and government that formed in response. The book also explains the impact of the railroad, showing how the entire continent opened up to white settlement, how the economy grew, and how the Native peoples of America were finally defeated in their efforts to retain their lands and ways of life.