In the summer of 1862 a group of railroad companies was authorized to build a track from the Missouri River (which had already been reached at St. Joseph by a railway from the East) to California. As modified by law in 1864 the contract provided for extensive government aid in the speculation: twenty sections of land for every mile of track, and a loan of United States bonds at the rate of at least $16,000 per mile. But the West had little capital, and the prosperous East had better investments at home, so that money could hardly be got into this scheme on any terms. The Western promoters were driven to shifty extremes before they overcame the Eastern belief that no continental railroad could pay. Not until 1866 was the construction work begun in earnest.
THE WESTERN RAILWAY LANDGRANTS, 1850-1871
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Explanation of the map of
THE WESTERN RAILWAY LAND GRANTS, 1850-1871
(This map is based upon the one in Donaldson, Public Domain, 948, and includes certain wagon-road lands.)
There never were any public lands in the State of Texas. Oklahoma lay within the Indian Country in which no lands were available for grants between 1850 and 1871.
The railway land grants, authorized between 1850 and 1871 lay within the areas shaded, and consisted, in all cases, of alternate sections on each side of the track. The sections retained by the United States were, however, withdrawn from entry upon filing of the railway survey, and remained withdrawn until the railway allotment had been made. Regions thus impeded in their development often became centers of hostility toward the railroads.
Between 1866 and 1869 the building of the Union Pacific was the most picturesque enterprise in America. Across the great plains, the desert, and the mountains, from Council Bluffs to Sacramento, it was pushed. In the West, Stanford and his group of California visionaries carried the burden. The eastern end brought out no single great promoter. Both ends fought the problem of timber and stone and railroad iron, but most of all of labor. Stanford finally imported the Chinese coolie for the job. Civil War veterans and new immigrants did most of the work on the eastern end. And along the eastern stretches the Indian tribes of the plains watched the work with jealous eyes. The Pawnee, the Sioux, the Arapaho, and the Cheyenne saw in the new road the end of a tribal life based upon wild game.
Severe Indian outbreaks accompanied the construction of the railroad, as the tribes made their last stand in Wyoming, Colorado, and the Indian Territory. Before the line was done, the tribes of the plains were under control in two great concentration camps, in South Dakota and Indian Territory, and the worst of the Indian fighting in the West was over.