In the 1850s, hauling a wagon of corn 200 miles to Chicago could cost more than the corn was worth, and a coast-to-coast trip was a six-month gamble with your life. Within a few decades that journey became a one-week ride at a tenth of the price. This episode tells the story of the first transcontinental railroad, from early champions Asa Whitney and Theodore Judah, through the sectional deadlock that only broke when Southern states seceded, to Abraham Lincoln signing the Pacific Railroad Act in 1862 and choosing Council Bluffs, Iowa as the eastern starting point.

The episode explains how checkerboard land grants and per-mile bonds of $16,000, $32,000, and $48,000 invited manipulation, including a geologist's ruling that the Sierra Nevada began on flat ground. It details the Credit Mobilier and Contract and Finance Company schemes that let  ...