THE RAILROAD'S ROUTE & (IN GREEN) MARK TWAIN'S | From Richardson's Beyond the Mississippi (1867)
MAP

The Trans-Continental RR

1872 ILLUSTRATION
CLICK TO ENLARGE
While in the woods and corn fields on one side of the Mississippi armies from the North and South fought a war, in the mountains and deserts on the other side 1000's of men (mostly Chinese and Irish) began building an iron roadway that would bring East and West closer together. Built west from San Francisco and east from Omaha, the two tracks were joined at Promontary Point, Utah, on 8 May 1869. In Roughing It MT says very little about the railroad: for comparison purposes, he follows his account of traveling by stage coach at THE END OF CHAPTER 4 by quoting an early description of traveling across the country by train from the 28 June 1869 New York Times. Though he doesn't call attention to it, his "West" of stagecoach drivers and pony express riders was already being replaced by the "West" described in accounts like the one in CROFUT'S TOURIST'S GUIDE (1872): a land where train tracks and telegraph poles were increasingly part of the landscape. At least, re-presentations of that landscape during the years 1861-1873, between MT's heading west and the appearance of Roughing It often made America's technological and other achievements in "civilizing" the territory as prominent as the territory itself, as in the two 1871 "pictorial guide books" listed below: their colored-illustrations organize "the West" around the route of the newly opened railroad, while the train and its impressively engineered route are at the center of nearly all the images.

PACIFIC RAILROAD SCENERY | UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD SCENERY



HOMEPAGE MAP