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Article: East meets West: Golden Spike National Historic Site in Utah tells the story of America's first transcontinental railroad, which transformed a nation by linking its coasts. (Historic Highlights).
- Article from:
- National Parks
- Article date:
- July 1, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 National Parks Conservation Association. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Today, travelers can get on a plane and fly from New York to San Francisco in about six hours. That makes it hard to appreciate the historical significance of the first transcontinental railroad. Indeed, mid-19th century Americans would have scoffed at the notion of coast-to-coast travel. To go "out there," to the vast, unknown West, was to most a pipe dream. Little did they know that an ambitious effort by two companies would, within two decades, link the Atlantic to the Pacific and transform a nation.
Once America's first railroads started running in the 1830s, visionaries dreamed about transcontinental rail travel. They believed that bridging the gap to the ...