who came up with the idea of the transcontinental railroad
Dr. Hartwell Carver
title: First Transcontinental Railroad text: the central route railroad was Asa Whitney. He envisioned a route from Chicago and the Great Lakes to northern California, paid for by the sale of land to settlers along the route. Whitney traveled widely to solicit support from businessmen and politicians, printed maps and pamphlets, and submitted several proposals to Congress, all at his own expense. In June 1845, he led a team along part of the proposed route to assess its feasibility. Legislation to begin construction of the "Pacific Railroad" (called the "Memorial of Asa Whitney") was first introduced to Congress by Representative Zadock Pratt. Congress did not title: First Transcontinental Railroad text: 1832 when Dr. Hartwell Carver published an article in the "New York Courier & Enquirer" advocating building a transcontinental railroad from Lake Michigan to Oregon. In 1847 he submitted to the U.S. Congress a "Proposal for a Charter to Build a Railroad from Lake Michigan to the Pacific Ocean", seeking a congressional charter to support his idea. Congress agreed to support the idea. Under the direction of the Department of War, the Pacific Railroad Surveys were conducted from 1853 through 1855. These included an extensive series of expeditions of the American West seeking possible routes. A report on the explorations title: National Transcontinental Railway text: transportation policies. The federal government had encouraged the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR) system in the 1870s to consider building the transcontinental rail line. During the same time, a government survey party under the direction of Sandford Fleming set out across Canada to survey routes for the proposed railway. The "Canadian Pacific Survey", as it was called, surveyed routes to a number of Pacific Coast destinations (including Victoria on Vancouver Island). When Grand Trunk balked at building a railway using the survey, the government turned to the privately owned Canadian Pacific. CPR, one of whose directors was James J. Hill, from title: Transcontinental railroad text: had learned their trade keeping the trains running during the American Civil War. The Central Pacific Railroad faced a labor shortage in the more sparsely settled West. It recruited Cantonese laborers in China, who did prodigious work building the line over and through the Sierra Nevada mountains and then across Nevada to their meeting in northern Utah. George J. Gould attempted to assemble a truly transcontinental system in the 1900s. The line from San Francisco, California, to Toledo, Ohio, was completed in 1909, consisting of the Western Pacific Railway, Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, Missouri Pacific Railroad, and Wabash Railroad. title: First Transcontinental Railroad text: to reach the Great Basin and hook up with rail lines coming from the East. In 1856, Judah wrote a 13,000-word proposal in support of a Pacific railroad and distributed it to Cabinet secretaries, congressmen and other influential people. In September 1859, Judah was chosen to be the accredited lobbyist for the Pacific Railroad Convention, which indeed approved his plan to survey, finance and engineer the road. Judah returned to Washington in December 1859. He had a lobbying office in the United States Capitol, received an audience with President James Buchanan, and represented the Convention before Congress. Judah returned to