The transcontinental railroads have brought the West up to its present
state of development, for they have opened it to settlement, and
provided reasonable rates for the transport of its products to the
Eastern markets, even if at the same time they have exposed its infant
manufacturing industries to the competition of the large
capitalization of the Atlantic seaboard and the Ohio Valley. In 1850
the West had 79½ miles of railroad, all in Louisiana. All the rest of
the westward stretch of the nation to the Pacific was without so much
as a single rail. What Louisiana could so proudly boast of in 1850 was
less than the mileage operated by the Boston and Maine and its
branches in Massachusetts that same year. By 1900 the total had
swelled to 87,406.13 miles out of the 193,345.78 miles in the United
States and the percentage from .25 to 45.2. On the basis of miles of
railroad per 100 square miles of territory Iowa leads with 16.56 and
Nevada is lowest with .83. In miles of line per ten thousand
inhabitants Nevada is first with 214.98, and Louisiana last with
20.44.
In view of the enormous railroad construction in the West in the past
thirty years it is worth while to recall President Buchanan's telegram
to John Butterfield, the pioneer of Western overland transportation,
when the first direct overland mail arrived by stage at Saint Louis
from San Francisco October 9, 1858:
I cordially congratulate you upon the result. It is a
glorious triumph for civilization and the Union. Settlements
will soon follow the course of the road, and the East and
the West will be bound together by a chain of living
Americans which can never be broken.