What is an effect of the transcontinental railroad?

Answer 1

On May 10, 1869, as the last spike was driven in the Utah desert, the blows were heard across the country. Telegraph wires wrapped around spike and sledgehammer transmitted the impact instantaneously east and west. In San Francisco and New York, wires had been connected to cannons facing outward across the ocean. When the signal from the spike came through, the cannons fired. The world was put on notice: the transcontinental railroad was completed and America was moving to the forefront of the world's stage.

The World Grew Smaller

One day later, the first transcontinental freight train rumbled out of California on its way to the east coast. It carried in its hold an emissary of the Asian markets: a shipment of Japanese teas. On May 15, though the road required hundreds of thousands of dollars in patchwork along its length, regular passenger service opened for business. Travelers could make the trip between San Francisco and New York in a week. No longer did passengers or cargo have to take the treacherous route across ocean and Panama that had killed railroad advocate Theodore Judah. The coasts were connected -- and the world as Americans knew it had grown smaller.

A Competing Canal

Railroad pioneer Asa Whitney had once dreamed an iron route would re-center the world toward America, making it a conduit of exchange between Asia and Europe. In this sense, his vision of the grand project remained unfulfilled. Just six months after the meeting at Promontory Summit, workers half the world away consummated their own monumental feat of engineering. Opened in November, 1869, Egypt's Suez Canal linked Asia and India to Europe by a single waterway, thus ensuring that exchange between the two regions would continue to circumvent American soil.