Worksheet

Canal, Wire and Rail: The Hall of Connections

Grade 8 geography practice: museum artifact labels, a described wall map and a travel-time table show how the Erie Canal, telegraph and railroads joined U.S. regions.

Grade 8Social StudiesInteractive · Printable

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Single worksheet
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1 C3 Framework standard
Printable answer key
11 questions
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Details

Format: Interactive · Printable
Grade: Grade 8
Subject: Social Studies
Question types: Fill in the blank, Multiple choice, Matching, Circle the answer, Sorting, Short answer

About this worksheet

What students practice

Students use a described map to trace routes that linked the Atlantic coast, the Great Lakes and California.
Students use travel-time data to explain how the telegraph and railroads shrank distances between regions.
Students weigh the costs and benefits of the railroad for different groups of people.

How to use

Have students sketch the wall map from its description before reading the labels, then work through the table and the questions in pairs.

Curriculum

C3 Framework standard covered

GEO.8.1

Use maps and data to explain how canals, railroads and the telegraph connected the regions of the United States.

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Canal, Wire and Rail: The Hall of Connections

Use a museum's labeled artifacts, a wall map and a table to explain how new links joined the nation's regions.

The wall map and the artifacts

The Crossroads Museum of Transportation in Buffalo, New York, is invented; its artifacts are real kinds of objects, and the facts on the labels are real. Read the wall map and the labels. Then answer the questions.

Wall map: Linking the Nation, 1825–1869
1. New York City, an Atlantic port where the Hudson River meets the ocean.
2. Albany, New York, about 150 miles north of New York City up the Hudson River. The Erie Canal begins here.
3. Buffalo, New York, on Lake Erie, at the western end of the canal, 363 canal miles west of Albany.
4. Chicago, Illinois, on Lake Michigan. Ships sailed the Great Lakes between Chicago and Buffalo.
5. Omaha, Nebraska, on the Missouri River, far west of Chicago. The Union Pacific Railroad built west from here.
6. Sacramento, California, near the Pacific coast. The Central Pacific Railroad built east from here, over the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Exhibit labels: The Hall of Connections

1Artifact 1: A towrope and a mule's harness bell, Erie Canal, about 1830. The Erie Canal opened in 1825. Mules walking on a towpath pulled long, flat boats between Albany and Buffalo. Before the canal, hauling a ton of goods by wagon from Buffalo to New York City cost about $100; by canal boat it cost about $10. Wheat and flour from farms around the Great Lakes floated east to Albany and down the Hudson, while settlers and factory goods moved west. Within a few years, New York City had become the nation's busiest port.

2Artifact 2: A telegraph key (reproduction), 1844. Samuel Morse's telegraph sent pulses of electricity along a wire as a code of dots and dashes. On May 24, 1844, Morse sent the message "What hath God wrought" from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore. Wires soon followed the railroads from city to city, and in October 1861 a telegraph line first crossed the continent to California.

3Artifact 3: A leather mail pouch, Pony Express, 1860. Starting in April 1860, young riders changing to fresh horses at stations along the way carried letters about 1,900 miles between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento. The service ended in October 1861, two days after the cross-country telegraph line was finished.

4Artifact 4: A copy of the golden spike, 1869. Central Pacific crews built east from Sacramento; many of its workers were Chinese immigrants who cut tunnels through the granite of the Sierra Nevada. Union Pacific crews, including many Irish immigrants and Civil War veterans, built west from Omaha. The two lines met at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory, on May 10, 1869. The tracks ran through the homelands of Native nations, including the Cheyenne, Lakota, Shoshone and Paiute, often without their consent; these nations still live in the West today.

5Artifact 5: A railroad station clock, 1883. Before 1883, most towns set their clocks by the sun, so local noon in Omaha came about half an hour after local noon in Chicago, and railroads used dozens of different local times. On November 18, 1883, railroads across the United States began using four standard time zones.

In 1830, a lake ship brings a load of wheat from the Great Lakes to Buffalo. Use the wall map. Which route would most likely carry the wheat on to New York City?

A. East by canal to Albany, then south down the Hudson
B. West to Omaha, then down the Missouri River to the sea
C. West across the lakes to Chicago, then east by railroad
D. North up the Hudson River from Albany to the ocean

Use the wall map. Add the canal miles and the river miles. Going by water from Buffalo to New York City covered about miles.

Based on Artifact 1, why did New York City become the nation's busiest port after 1825?

A. It was the eastern end of the Union Pacific line.
B. The canal joined it by water to the farms of the Great Lakes.
C. Its port was the first to receive telegraph news.
D. The canal let ocean ships sail straight to Chicago.

Draw a line from each link to the way it connected people, based on the labels.

Erie Canal
Telegraph
Transcontinental railroad
Standard time zones

A. Gave railroads shared times for their schedules
B. Cut the cost of moving goods between the lakes and the Hudson
C. Sent coded news along wires between distant cities
D. Joined the Pacific coast to the Missouri River by track

How fast did news and people travel?

Use the table and the labels.

Reaching California (approximate usual times)
Year	Message or trip	Usual time
1858	Mail by stagecoach from St. Louis	about 25 days
1860	Mail by Pony Express from St. Joseph	about 10 days
1861	Telegraph message from the East	minutes
1870	Train trip from New York City	about 7 days

Use the table. Mail by Pony Express reached California about days faster than mail by stagecoach.

Use the table and Artifact 3. Why did the Pony Express most likely shut down in October 1861?

A. The railroad had already reached California.
B. Stagecoaches had become faster than riders.
C. The Erie Canal began carrying the mail west.
D. The telegraph could send messages in minutes.

Which statement does the table best support?

A. After 1861, news reached California faster than travelers.
B. By 1870, trains crossed the continent in a few hours.
C. Trips to California grew longer as railroads spread.
D. Pony Express mail took longer than stagecoach mail.

Linking the regions

Use the map, the labels and the table.

In 1880, a railroad runs trains between Chicago and Omaha. Based on Artifact 5, why would its managers welcome standard time zones?

A. Chicago and Omaha already shared the same clock time.
B. The telegraph needed clocks set to one time zone.
C. Each town's own sun time made schedules confusing.
D. Trains were not allowed to run after local noon.

Underline the sentence from Artifact 4 that best shows a group who bore a cost of the railroad without agreeing to it.

Central Pacific crews built east from Sacramento; many of its workers were Chinese immigrants who cut tunnels through the granite of the Sierra Nevada.Union Pacific crews, including many Irish immigrants and Civil War veterans, built west from Omaha.The two lines met at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory, on May 10, 1869.The tracks ran through the homelands of Native nations, including the Cheyenne, Lakota, Shoshone and Paiute, often without their consent; these nations still live in the West today.

10.

Sort each link by the two regions it mainly joined.

Mule-drawn boats between Albany and BuffaloRiders changing horses on the way to SacramentoTracks that met at Promontory SummitLake ships between Chicago and BuffaloRiver boats from Albany down to New York CityRail crews building west from Omaha

Great Lakes and Atlantic coast	Missouri River and California

11.

Claim: "The telegraph did more than the railroad to connect the regions of the United States." Do you agree or disagree? Make your own claim, use at least two pieces of evidence from the labels, the map or the table, and explain your reasoning.