Research Paper on:
Go West on the Transcontinental Railroad

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the openness of the northwestern states. As the cattle population continued to grow, so did that of the settlers, who were now forming communities under the Homestead act.  Farmers, their families and their animals all found a place in the western cities on account of the passage created by the Transcontinental Railroad. With each portion of land  that was occupied, the cattlemen were told to move along, because they no longer had free reign over the use of the land "without legal title" (United States Information Service,  1991, p. PG). It can be argued that such substantial settlement was the ultimate demise of the wild west, in that it most definitely tamed the calling of the  ranchmen. However, there was much expansion to be done and many plots to be developed, which left little time for the settlers to mourn the passing of a monumental  period on Americas history. Indeed, the emergence of the Transcontinental Railroad served to open up great opportunity for such growth in the western cities that it made a significant  change in how the country would have otherwise been developed. "...Before the railroad, getting to the west coast involved either three-month-long sea voyages or three-month-long overland treks, both equally  dangerous, as well as prohibitively expensive for most people. When the railroad was completed, a person could make that same trip in a week for as little as one  hundred dollars" (Kaetz, 2001, p. 39). The Transcontinental Railroad was instrumental in providing growth and development for the western cities, particularly California;  indeed, it was the railroad that caused such "excitement of the technology as well as the rising tension of the competitive race between the teams from the East and the