What does the railroad bring to the Great Plains?
As an instrument of development, railroads transformed the Great Plains into an integrated part of both the United States and Canada by carrying passengers, including inbound immigrants, and by hauling agricultural products out and building materials in.
What did the railroad bring?
In addition to transporting western food crops and raw materials to East Coast markets and manufactured goods from East Coast cities to the West Coast, the railroad also facilitated international trade. The first freight train to travel eastward from California carried a load of Japanese tea.
How did railroads impact the Great Plains?
After the Civil War, railroads brought people into the Great Plains West in massive numbers. This diversity was realized because the company had an opened-ended land-contract policy, and because settlers took up the technology the railroads made possible and used it to their own purposes.
What happens to the Great Plains?
An initial wave of settlement was followed by emigration in times of drought. By the mid-1930s, decades of overgrazing and poor soil management in many of the Plains states had resulted in dust storms and the devastation of crops (see Dust Bowl).
How did World War 1 impact the Great Plains?
In general, the Plains oil industry expanded. But the Plains industries most positively affected by the war were agriculture and livestock production. The pressure to mechanize increased as much of the traditional farm labor force was pressed into military service.
How did the railroads help the Great Plains?
The Railroad Age solved most of the Great Plains’s chronic transport problems and gave the region some of its distinctive characteristics. The thousands of communities spawned and nurtured by the rails often sported a flavor of standardization that the later network of all-weather roads with its automobiles, buses, and trucks helped to sustain.
Where did the transcontinental railroad cross the west?
The transcontinental railroad crossed western plains and mountains and linked the West Coast with the rail networks of the eastern United States. Constructed from the west by the Central Pacific and from the east by the Union Pacific, the two roads were linked in Utah in 1869 to great national fanfare.
What did the Southern Plains Indians use for transportation?
The Southern Plains Indians, who had the largest herds, continued to use dogs to carry small items such as moccasins and household utensils. When European Americans entered the Great Plains, they often paddled or floated along thousands of miles of meandering waterways.
Where did the people of the Great Plains Trade?
Finally, most Plains tribes were engaged in long-distance commerce at trade centers such as the Arikara and Mandan-Hidatsa villages on the upper Missouri River, which, for some tribes, meant covering hundreds of miles.
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