How The Transcontinental Railroad Affected North America

The Transcontinental Railroad was a technological achievement that cut the trip from the East to the West from six months to one week. Not only did it help communication between the states, it facilitated trade, specifically Western raw goods and Eastern manufactured goods (Quinn). Even though the country needed a railroad to link the two sides and allow for communication, its effects changed the way that North America functioned, through the destruction of the ecosystems that had been in place for thousands of years, the creation of the first large corporations, and furthering discrimination against the Chinese laborers that built it. Building the railroad introduced cattle and ended the way of life for the buffalo and Indians. Approximately “30 million to 60 million” buffalo lived on the Great Plains before the railway (King). From 1875 to 1885 the herds were decimated (Quinn). Cattle moved in as the buffalo died and the “increase in the number of cattle led to overgrazing and destruction of the fragile plains grasses,” and they could not recover (“The Cattle Frontier”). The Plains Indians had used the buffalo before the arrival of cattle and felt this change, as they needed them for clothing and food (Quinn). The ecosystems of …show more content…
Americans used the phrase “California for the Americans” to show that they did not want them (Norton). Chinn states the Central Pacific Company turned to the Chinese for labor and that they turned to Asia when they ran out of local workers. The Chinese Exclusion Act made it difficult for Chinese to enter the country as to slow American job loss. The decrease in American workers caused legislative action which set the racism in law, and helped rationalize the laws that would later separate white and black in American culture. It was another instance of discrimination against people based on their race, not unlike the issues surrounding freed African