Free Ebook BookNothing Like It In the World The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869

[PDF.xODJ] Nothing Like It In the World The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869

[PDF.xODJ] Nothing Like It In the World The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869

You can download in the form of an ebook: pdf, kindle ebook, ms word here and more softfile type. [PDF.xODJ] Nothing Like It In the World The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869, this is a great books that I think are not only fun to read but also very educational.
Book Details :
Published on: 2000-08-29
Released on: 2000-08-29
Original language:

In this account of an unprecedented feat of engineering, vision, and courage, Stephen E. Ambrose offers a historical successor to his universally acclaimed Undaunted Courage, which recounted the explorations of the West by Lewis and Clark. Nothing Like It in the World is the story of the men who built the transcontinental railroad -- the investors who risked their businesses and money; the enlightened politicians who understood its importance; the engineers and surveyors who risked, and lost, their lives; and the Irish and Chinese immigrants, the defeated Confederate soldiers, and the other laborers who did the backbreaking and dangerous work on the tracks. The Union had won the Civil War and slavery had been abolished, but Abraham Lincoln, who was an early and constant champion of railroads, would not live to see the great achievement. In Ambrose's hands, this enterprise, with its huge expenditure of brainpower, muscle, and sweat, comes to life. The U.S. government pitted two companies -- the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific Railroads -- against each other in a race for funding, encouraging speed over caution. Locomo-tives, rails, and spikes were shipped from the East through Panama or around South America to the West or lugged across the country to the Plains. This was the last great building project to be done mostly by hand: excavating dirt, cutting through ridges, filling gorges, blasting tunnels through mountains. At its peak, the workforce -- primarily Chinese on the Central Pacific, Irish on the Union Pacific -- approached the size of Civil War armies, with as many as fifteen thousand workers on each line. The Union Pacific was led by Thomas "Doc" Durant, Oakes Ames, and Oliver Ames, with Grenville Dodge -- America's greatest railroad builder -- as chief engineer. The Central Pacific was led by California's "Big Four": Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington, Charles Crocker, and Mark Hopkins. The surveyors, the men who picked the route, were latter-day Lewis and Clark types who led the way through the wilderness, living off buffalo, deer, elk, and antelope. In building a railroad, there is only one decisive spot -- the end of the track. Nothing like this great work had been seen in the world when the last spike, a golden one, was driven in at Promontory Summit, Utah, in 1869, as the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific tracks were joined. Ambrose writes with power and eloquence about the brave men -- the famous and the unheralded, ordinary men doing the extraordinary -- who accomplished the spectacular feat that made the continent into a nation. Transcontinental Railroad HistoryNet Transcontinental Railroad summary: The First Transcontinental Railroad was built crossing the western half of America and it was pieced together between 1863 and 1869 ... Heading West Railroads In The 1870s - American-Rails.com The industry in the Civil War and during the 1860s was still able to nearly double their network of mileage even with the conflict and railroads in the 1870s further ... First Transcontinental Railroad - Photographic History Museum The idea for a transcontinental railroad "to shrink the continent and change the whole world" was first proposed by men of imagination in 1830. FAQ's - First Transcontinental Railroad Frequently asked questions about the transcontinental railroad. Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum. Peter J. McClosky's Southern Pacific Railroad Web ... I have had an all abiding life long interest in the Southern Pacific Railroad. This list contains all of the major and some minor resources that I know of that are ... First Transcontinental Railroad - Wikipedia The First Transcontinental Railroad (known originally as the "Pacific Railroad" and later as the "Overland Route") was a 1912-mile (3077 km) continuous railroad ... Hell on Wheels - Wikipedia The phrase "Hell on Wheels" was originally used to describe the itinerant collection of flimsily assembled gambling houses dance halls saloons and brothels that ...
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