Description Includes pictures Includes accounts of the projects\' Construction Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading The Transcontinental Railroad, laid across the United States during the 1860s, remains the very epitome of contradiction.
Moreover, traveling around the tip of South America was fraught with danger, and European explorers and settlers had proposed building a Canal in Panama or Nicaragua several centuries before the Panama Canal was actually built..
On the other hand, there was a tremendous motivation to try, because if a Canal could be successfully cut across Central America to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, it would cut weeks off the time necessary to carry goods by sea from the well-established East Coast of the United States to the burgeoning West Coast.
In fact, many thought it could not be done.
In a world where few natural rivers carved out over eons of time have reached a length of more than 50 miles, the idea that a group of men could carve a Canal of that length seemed impossible.
This required an incredible amount of manpower, often consisting of unskilled laborers engaging in dangerous work, and the financial resources poured into it were also extreme.
Of course, even once a route was chosen, the backbreaking work itself had to be done to connect Railroad lines across the span of nearly 2, 000 miles.
In short, it was the best and worst of 19th century America in action.
It was bold and careless, ingenious and cruel, gentle and violent, and it enriched some and bankrupted others.
It made the careers of many men and destroyed the lives from many others.
It "civilized" the American West by making it easier for women and children to travel there, but it dispossessed Native American civilizations that had lived there for generations.
On the one hand, it was a triumph of Engineering skills over thousands of miles of rough terrain, but on the other hand, it drained the natural resources in those places nearly dry.
Description Includes pictures Includes accounts of the projects\' Construction Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading The Transcontinental Railroad, laid across the United States during the 1860s, remains the very epitome of contradiction
