by The Iron Spine That United an American Nation and Market
This nomination for the government officials, financiers, and workers of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads who completed the First Transcontinental Railroad in 1869, symbolically joined by the Golden Spike at Promontory Summit. Funded by massive federal land grants and subsidies, this infrastructure project was the greatest business enterprise of its era. It united the east and west coasts of the United States, reducing cross-country travel from months to days. It opened the West for settlement, integrated a continental market, and made possible the large-scale movement of goods, people, and ideas. It also led to the destruction of Native American ways of life and immense environmental change. The Railroad proved that government and private enterprise, in a symbiotic (and often corrupt) relationship, could undertake projects of national unification and economic transformation on a previously unimaginable scale, creating the physical framework for a modern industrial economy.
