History of the Union Pacific Railroad
The laws were passed as war measures to forge closer ties with California and Oregon, which otherwise took six months to reach.
Most of the wheat farmers joined the People's Party, a Populist movement in the 1890s and engaged in heated anti-railroad rhetoric.
[quantify] He upgraded its 3,000 miles of trackage, modernized its equipment and merged it with the Southern Pacific, which dominated California.
[4] Economically, the UP provided transcontinental service, as well as shipping out wheat and other crops, cattle, and mining products and bringing in consumer items and industrial goods from the East.
Jay Gould took control in 1873 and built a viable railroad that depended on shipments by local farmers and ranchers.
"He revised its financial structure, waged its competitive struggles, captained its political battles, revamped its administration, formulated its rate policies and promoted the development of resources along its lines.".
Starting in summer 1865 Omaha became the logistics base for thousands of tons of rails, ties, tools, and supplies.
During the winter of 1865–66, former Union General John S. Casement, the new Chief Engineer, assembled men and supplies to push the railroad rapidly west.
Temporary, "Hell on wheels" towns, made mostly of canvas tents, accompanied the railroad as construction headed west.
[17] The new route surveyed across Wyoming was over 150 miles (240 km) shorter, had a flatter profile, allowed for cheaper and easier railroad construction, and also went closer by Denver and the known coalfields in the Wasatch and Laramie Ranges.
The original Union Pacific reached the new railroad town of Cheyenne in December 1867, having laid about 270 miles (430 km) that year.
Its location made it a good base for helper locomotives to couple to trains with snowplows to clear the tracks of winter snow or help haul heavy freight over Evan's pass.
Evanston became a significant train maintenance shop town equipped to carry out extensive repairs on the cars and steam locomotives.
To speed up construction as much as possible, Union Pacific contracted several thousand Mormon workers to cut, fill, trestle, bridge, blast and tunnel its way down the rugged Weber River Canyon to Ogden, Utah ahead of the railroad construction.
The Mormon and Union Pacific rail work was joined in the area of the present-day border between Utah and Wyoming.
It built or purchased local lines that gave it access to key locations: Denver, Colorado, Portland, Oregon, and to the Pacific Northwest.
Jan Richard Heier argues that, "America's greatest technological achievement of the nineteenth century" was the transcontinental railroad.
He adds that the political scandal over the disposition of millions of dollars in government bonds led to Congressional hearings that showed the weakness of accounting methods.
The result was the Rock Springs massacre, that killed scores of Chinese, and drove all the rest out of Wyoming.
[25][26][27] In addition to charges for freight and passenger service, the UP made its money from land sales, especially to farmers and ranchers.
The UP's goal was not to make a profit, but rather to build up a permanent clientele of farmers and townspeople who would form a solid basis for routine sales and purchases.
The UP, like other major lines, opened sales offices in the East and in Europe, advertised heavily,[28] and offered attractive package rates for farmer to sell out and move his entire family, and his tools, to the new destination.
[31] E. H. Harriman (1848-1909) in 1898 became chairman of the UP executive committee, and from that time until his death his word was law on the Union Pacific system.
He merged the UP with the larger Southern Pacific in 1900 to obtain greater efficiency and more monopoly power in the Southwest.
[32][page needed] The Justice Department sued, and in 1912 the Supreme Court separated the two companies because the suppression of competition was in restraint of trade and violated the 1890 Sherman antitrust act.
[33] Labor unrest was generally low in the United States after the great strikes of 1919, but there was tension among the shopmen of the Union Pacific.
The railroad cut wage rates in Las Vegas, Nevada, the site of major repair shops.
After episodes of violence by striking pickets, the railroad obtained a federal injunction restraining against threats or attacks.
[41] Alone among modern railroads, UP maintains several historic locomotives for special trains and for hire in its Cheyenne, Wyoming, roundhouse.
[citation needed] UP 949, 951 and 963B are a trio of streamlined General Motors Electro-Motive Division E9 passenger locomotives built in 1955.
