It was originally called the Pacific Railroad and later the Overland Route but we know it better today as the first transcontinental railroad. It was perhaps the most important single event that brought the railroad to the forefront of a growing United States.

If it didn’t actually happen, the building of the first transcontinental railroad might instead have been a great novel of power, greed, politics, corruption and intrigue. The project had them all and more.

Two railroad companies competed, often bitterly, to lay as much track as possible and receive as much federal land and funding as possible. Speed and shortcuts quickly replaced quality control. The Central Pacific built east from Sacramento, California, and the Union Pacific built west from Omaha, Nebraska.

The First Transcontinental Railroad Story is just that — the story of those who built the transcontinental railroad from the small town investors, engineers and surveyors to the thousands of nameless Irish and Chinese laborers who did the backbreaking and dangerous work on the tracks and in the mountains.

The First Transcontinental Railroad Story also covers the uprisings and wars between the Native Americans and the U.S. Army and other forces. The names of these battles are all sad chapters in American history.

Its completion in spring of 1869 was celebrated as a wonder of engineering and an important new link between people and places in the east with those in the far west.