The first American railroad - Narrative - Essay Example

The First American Rail Road Narratives are stories that connect various events in the telling of a major happening. They are of various categories including fictional, bibliographies and histographies. In American history narratives are important as histographies. According to Lawrence stone, narratives in histographies are mainly rhetoric devices used by historian. They are important in that it becomes possible to connect various aspects of history in telling about one event (Hofsommer 3). It is able to understand the nature of these aspects and relationship and effects on each other.

For instance, through narratives it is possible to explain and understand how people and cultures of the past related with each other leading to the process of development and how this development came to spread in various regions. All this, being in the foretelling of the first American rail road line.The first American rail road was approximately three thousand and sixty nine kilometers or one thousand nine hundred and seven miles long. Also dubbed as the first transcontinental rail road and the pacific rail road, it caught a lot of peoples eyes in amazement.

It was constructed through a total tie period of six years form 1863 to 1869. The totality of the rail road line ran form the pacific coast of San Francisco bay to council bluffs, Lowa across the western united states (Hofsommer 12).This rail road was at the time the major development project and people used it as the major form of transport. This made sure that the government was keen in every aspects of its development. For instance it involved the consultancy of various private companies in its development such as the western pacific rail road company, the central pacific railroad company of California, and the union pacific rail road company.

Each of these companies was involved in the planning and implementation stages with each partaking a share of building the rail way line (Hofsommer 4).As was in many of the other regions at the time, the paddle steamers were the first locomotives to move across this rail road. On the day of the launching of the rail way the first paddle steamer on the road was launched and many of the high and mighty citizens in the country partook tickets to ride and go down in history as the first passengers on the first American rail road.

Thousand more lined along the rail road through out the whole journey to witness this remarkable invention that promised to come with better developmental opportunities for their nation.The civil war provided America with trained personnel in engineering and mechanics who were able to build this rail road after the war. They were the ones that culminated the idea and even formed some of these companies that partook in the building of the rail road line(Hofsommer 22). As people today enjoy more sophisticated railway lines such as those used by electricity trains, it is important to be are of the various events in history that brought development to this point.

This is not only the development history but, also various aspects such as those of the civil war and differential cultures bringing together a combined human resource that made all this possible.Work cited Hofsommer, D. Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863-1869, and: Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad (review). Technology and culture magazine, 2013. Print.