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First Transcontinental Railroad Research Paper

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Between the 1840s and the 1860s, settlers began to venture westward across the United States. Many risked contracting yellow fever and other diseases by choosing to travel by sea rather than land, taking the six-month route around Cape Horn or the Isthmus of Panama instead of trekking through perilous mountains and deserts. As a resolution, President Abraham Lincoln signed into law the Pacific Railroad Act on July 1, 1862.

This act provided federal funding of the first transcontinental railroad, therefore supplying two railroad companies each with 12,800 acres of land and $48,000 in government bonds for every mile of track built upon completion. The Central Pacific Railroad Company built eastward from Sacramento, California while the Union

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