Who was the winner of the transcontinental railroad race?
Building the transcontinental railroad was certainly, as Congress intended, a race in the sense of a highly successful business competition, and consequently the best answer as to who won is probably everybody. The railroad was completed years ahead of schedule as a result. At the completion of the first transcontinental railroad, the CPRR was 742 miles long (including 47 1/2 miles purchased and 5 miles leased from the UPRR); and the UPRR was 1,032 miles long. (These figures do not include double counting of the miles of parallel grading in Utah which the CPRR and UPRR both hired Mormon contractors to perform.) The U.S. government financing, while making it possible to build the transcontinental railroad, gave the railroads essentially nothing. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately concluded that government loaned money to the railroads that had to be repaid in full with interest, and gave almost worthless land grants to the railroads while retaining an equal amount of land (in a checkerbo
