American Indians and the Transcontinental Railroad
As we advocate for passenger rail as the foundation of a sustainable, equitable, lower-carbon transportation system, we have to remember that we’re not building this sustainable system in a historical vacuum. We were reminded of this when, browsing through presentations at a rail history event at the Utah State Railroad Museum in Ogden this summer, we encountered this short history by Elliott West, Professor of History at the University of Arkansas, about how development of the transcontinental railroad played a major part in displacing native American communities:
“…Railroads, as a technological marvel, appeared and spread just as the nation was acquiring and establishing its control over the far West and its native peoples. The first rail lines began operating in the 1830s, but they truly began to come into their own early in the next decade. The amount of trackage in 1840, fewer than three thousand miles, increased ten times over in the next twenty years, then leapt to more than 115,000 miles in 1880. Those same years saw the acquisition of the far West, its political organization, the start of its economic transformation— and the conquest and dispossession of its native peoples. The two developments—westward expansion and the establishment of a national rail system—cannot be understood apart from one another. The consequences for American Indians were especially doleful….”
Read more here https://ap.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/development-west/essays/american-indians-and-transcontinental-railroad
