As a New Yorker in the mid-1800s, the West was like Narnia: far off and basically mythical.

Getting to the West was possible, yes, but it wasn't exactly easy. The miles of rough terrain and wilderness that separated the East from the West might as well have been a giant fence dividing America into two totally different countries. Only the bravest of the brave would chance a move to the West, right?

Luckily, not only were the 1800s a time of incredible growth for the United States, but they were also a time of incredible technological advancement. The East Coast was already benefitting from these advances in technology and transportation, and it was finally time to spread the wealth. There had been talk of a transcontinental railroad that would run the entire length of the country from Atlantic to Pacific, but exactly what route that railroad would take was hotly debated.

Railroads mean money. They increase trade, they offer reliable transportation, and they encourage the growth of cities and towns. Naturally then, everyone wanted the railroad to run through their backyard. Northerners wanted the railroad to connect their big cities to the West and Southerners wanted to be able to easily and cheaply transport their goods to the West. 

Once the Civil War started and the South no longer had a say in it—to the victor belong the spoils, right?—a plan was introduced to construct a transcontinental railroad connecting existing railway from Omaha, Nebraska to Sacramento, California. The Union Pacific Railway would work from the East and the Central Pacific Railway from the West. And they'd meet in the middle.

So, on May 10th, 1869, a final golden spike was hammered into the first American transcontinental railroad, a project that had cost hundreds of millions of dollars and required years of labor from tens of thousands of men. Connecting the Union Pacific (UP) with the Central Pacific (CP) was the single greatest feat of engineering in U.S. history, the culmination of dreaming, planning, and building—and absolutely scamming—on an unprecedented scale.

How's this for an American epic recipe? 

Take a couple hundred million dollars, at least ten thousand Chinese workers, hordes of demobilized Civil War veterans, a few crooked financiers, one possibly delusional engineer, an assassinated president, a bunch of increasingly desperate Plains Indian tribes, and some Mormons. 

Mix with ample amounts of blasting powder, nitroglycerine, and whiskey and spread it all across the iconic landscape of the American West. 

Maybe throw in a couple of hookers, gamblers, and gunslingers for a little spice. Sound exciting? It was.

Railroad building was a defining characteristic of 19th-century America. Nowhere in history was this process quite so dramatic as it was in the building of the first transcontinental railroad. It was the physical, material process of a young nation growing into its own vast territory and grand sense of destiny, and the building of that railroad encompassed many of the great issues of the day: westward expansion, immigrant labor, the rise of big business, national unity and disunity, political corruption, the subjugation of the Plains Indians, and more. 

This is the story of how the whole crazy thing came together.