It was big news 140 years ago.
The Transcontinental Express made the
trip from New York City to San Francisco in 83 hours—only three days and 11
hours!—and stunned the nation. A human being could ride the rails and cross the
country in less than four days. Yowza!
The coast-to-coast railroad connection
had been completed only seven years earlier, after the federal government had
supported the epic project with millions in government bonds and vast land
grants. (Quite a few people got rich, illegally, in the process, and some members
of Congress were in that clique).
The amazing fact of speedy passage from
sea to shining seas was celebrated as a boon to commercial and industrial
development, and to the national prestige of the United States, which had more
miles of railroad track than any other country.
Some of the folks who read the news on
June 4, 1876, could remember that it took Vice President Jefferson 10 days to
travel the 225 miles, using horsepower, from Monticello to his office in
Philadelphia (the national capital until 1801). History.com notes that at the
time, the 100-mile trip from Philadelphia to New York City required “two days hard travel in a
light stagecoach.” The word “comfortable” wasn’t
used in any ads by stagecoach operators.
For a lot of folks, travel on the early
transcontinental trains wasn’t much of a treat. First-class passengers wallowed
in sumptuous splendor, but third-class travelers got a narrow wooden bench to
sit on, no privacy and darn little respect—the third-class coaches often were
shunted onto sidings to allow faster express trains to take precedence on the
single track that served most of the route. The hoi polloi spent a whole lot
more than 83 hours in their noisy coaches as they made the cross-country
passage.
Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2016
All rights reserved.
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