Transcontinental Railroad Primary Sources
Historical documents. What clues can you gather about the time, place, players, and culture?
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Along with several photos of the ceremony marking the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, the Central Pacific Railroad Photographic Museum page includes scans of a few contemporary newspaper chronicles of the event.
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The University of Michigan now has online a full version of The Pacific Tourist, a classic 1876 account of the transcontinental journey by rail.
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The Virtual Museum of San Francisco has an online text of Theodore Judah's Pacific railroad proposal of 1857.
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The Central Pacific Railroad Museum site has a link to an excerpted version of one of Asa Whitney's Pacific railroad proposals to Congress—this one from 1848.
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This scan is the text of war department correspondence regarding Gen. William T. Sherman's 1867 order to provide military protection to trains on the UP route.