transcontinental railroad

Cultural  

1. A train route across the United States, finished in 1869. It was the project of two railroad companies: the Union Pacific built from the east, and the Central Pacific built from the west. The two lines met in Utah. The Central Pacific laborers were predominantly Chinese, and the Union Pacific laborers predominantly Irish. Both groups often worked under harsh conditions.

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Example Sentences

In July, Union Pacific agreed to buy Norfolk Southern for $72 billion, in a bid to create the first U.S. transcontinental railroad.

From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 31, 2025

Union Pacific announced in July a proposal to acquire Norfolk Southern in a merger that would create the country’s first transcontinental railroad.

From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 4, 2025

In the mid-1800s, it was Chinese workers who built the western leg of the transcontinental railroad across the Sierra Nevada.

From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 29, 2024

The 19th-century transcontinental railroad; the Manhattan Project, which developed the nuclear weapons that ended World War II; and the 1960s Apollo space program are examples.

From Washington Post • Mar. 6, 2023

If the building of the transcontinental railroad had served no other purpose, it had sent a steady stream of people away from the gold fields—a circumstance that made his mission seem all the more hopeless.

From Forty-one Thieves A Tale of California by Hall, Angelo