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Canal, Wire and Rail: The Hall of Connections

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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.

1.
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?
Question 1 options
2.

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

3.
Based on Artifact 1, why did New York City become the nation's busiest port after 1825?
Question 3 options
4.
Draw a line from each link to the way it connected people, based on the labels.

How fast did news and people travel?

Use the table and the labels.

Reaching California (approximate usual times)
YearMessage or tripUsual time
1858Mail by stagecoach from St. Louisabout 25 days
1860Mail by Pony Express from St. Josephabout 10 days
1861Telegraph message from the Eastminutes
1870Train trip from New York Cityabout 7 days
5.

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

6.
Use the table and Artifact 3. Why did the Pony Express most likely shut down in October 1861?
Question 6 options
7.
Which statement does the table best support?
Question 7 options

Linking the regions

Use the map, the labels and the table.

8.
In 1880, a railroad runs trains between Chicago and Omaha. Based on Artifact 5, why would its managers welcome standard time zones?
Question 8 options
9.
Underline the sentence from Artifact 4 that best shows a group who bore a cost of the railroad without agreeing to it.

10.
Sort each link by the two regions it mainly joined.
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.