The Transcontinental Express

On this day in 1876, an express train named the Transcontinental Express arrived in San Francisco, just 89 hours and 39 minutes after leaving New York City.
Earlier in the century, fast travel across the continent was inconceivable. In 1805, Lewis and Clark arrived at the Pacific Ocean — it took them one year, six months, and a day to get there from St. Louis, Missouri. But the idea was there. In 1803, Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter in which he discussed moving carriages by something other than horses, and he said, "That the introduction of so powerful an agent as steam will make a great change in the situation of man I have no doubt." In 1800, the American inventor Oliver Evans wrote: "The time will come when people will travel in stages moved by steam-engines from one city to another, almost as fast as birds can fly, 15 or 20 miles an hour."
1825 saw the introduction of the first viable transportation with steam engines. Great Britain's Stockton & Darlington Railroad Company was the first to carry passengers and goods. In 1830, the Tom Thumb became the first steam-powered train to successfully carry passengers in America.
By the end of 1830, 14 miles of track had been laid for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, and the next year they had fully transitioned away from horses and to steam engines. By 1840, there were 2,755 miles of track in America.
There was talk of a railroad that would link the Pacific to the Atlantic.
Most people did in fact favor it, but a bill got stalled in Congress because there was so much infighting about the route that the railroad would take. Every senator was, of course, eager for it to run through their home state, with Southern senators particularly adamant about a southern route. Besides the train's route, lawmakers fought about how much power should be given to the government vs. private companies and where engineers and workers should come from.
On top of all that, engineers and businessmen couldn't figure out how to route the railroad through the Sierra Mountains. But in 1860, a storekeeper in the tiny town of Dutch Flat invited Theodore Judah, the main engineer for the proposed railroad, to his town with the promise that he knew an easy way to cross the mountains. And indeed, unlike most of the Sierras, in the area around Dutch Flat you didn't have to cross two summits with a valley in between, just one. It was the perfect spot, and Judah agreed immediately, and set off to convince investors as well as Congress of the same thing.
In 1864, the Union Pacific broke ground in Omaha and the Central Pacific did the same in Sacramento. The Central Pacific employed lots of Chinese workers, and the Union Pacific many Irish immigrants.
Eventually in 1869, Sacramento was connected to San Francisco, and in 1872, a bridge was built over the Missouri. And on this day in 1876, an express train made the trip in 83 hours, a trip that would have taken many months only 10 years earlier.