WS 3371 Fall 2007

What I found really interesting about this week's reading was how powerful the railroad was in shaping the landscape, especially in terms of towns. It was mentioned that in England the railroad came second and it just connected well-establish towns and cities, but in the American west, it was the reverse, the railroad came first and then the towns, cities and farms. I guess this effect was seen a bit with canals, as towns popped up where the locks were, but it just seems like the railroad took it to an entirely new level, where the placement of stations, depots, etc. could make or break a town. I don’t think that any modern day transportation had that kind of influence. Cars and airplanes have really taken over transportation from the railroad, but you don’t see mail-order buildings ready to be placed wherever a new airport or freeway might be. Either way, I think the railroads really emphasized how technology was seen as a way to transform nature from something worthless and incomplete to something of value.

It's interesting to see how the railroad influenced the West compared to the Central part of the U.S. The railroad basically developed cities in the West, whereas, the railroad was brought to the central part of the U.S. to deliver new needs to the people in those cities. It seems like the cities back in the 1900's quickly relied on the railroad (the new technology then) as we do today with 'new' technologies like the car/plane/phone.

I believe it's just natural for societies to change the landscape of the world. Cities are constantly growing and before we know it, the world will eventually reach capacity for life and then life on the moon or mars comes into the picture.

It is interesting how people used to think just a few hundred years ago. Of course not everyone is lumped in this category. I found it interesting that people used to view this country as something that was placed here by the benevolent creator for people to do with the land as they saw fit. They saw the land as something that needed improvement, a striped down version of what it should or can be. I also found it interesting to think about how development was different from East as compared to the West. In the eastern U.S. towns were settled because they provided something that the settlers needed; the Atlantic provided the people with ways to travel and fish for food. In the west people could settle places that were more aesthetically pleasing; they no longer needed to live near the ocean because the train was able to provide them with produce from other parts of the country. This was kind of the beginning of less work oriented living and more of an enjoyable less restricted living.

Page 153 says that merchants and bankers had to be convinced that river valleys were not the only "natural" channels of trade. In the making of canels, the river valleys looked vary inviting; the mountains looked like they would reject the idea of train tracks built through them. Besides this obvious physical difference, I think that people were more apprehensive about the train track idea because the trains would involve more technology, perhaps a little more than people were willing to trust at the time. Maybe that is why clamboring over or ploughing through the mountains seemed so unnatural.

What I found that was really interesting about this reading is Nye's interpretation of the settlers' thoughts on the new land.

The quote that really stuck out to me was on 154 "The improvement of nature is natural". Personally I strongly disagree. I believe that nature is the way it is for a reason. I know that sound really "green" but I enjoy seeing a river untouched by man. I am not saying that I don't enjoy using paved roads, but not all nature needs to be changed to be right. It seemed that the settlers didn't want America to look anything like it started out as.

Another reason this quote sounds so wrong to me is because the different time periods. Back then the settlers thought there was no end to the trees and that they could never devastate our natural resources. Well we are devastating our natural resources and I have grown up to see it. It would be interesting to see what American would have looked like if the West coast was discovered first.

I found it to very interesting that when the idea of the railroad was first brought to the table that it faced strong opposition. Wasn't it just a few years that this very same society was looking for ways to vastly improve their transportation system?I know not everyone was opposed to the idea, but those who were, seemed to have strong feelings against it. There reason for this was that it wasn't natural or something along those lines. But, the man made canals weren't exactly natural either were they?
Either way you look at the issue, the railroad was a good and bad advancement in society. The development of the railroad led to the development of this counrty and if we are not careful it could also lead to the demise of this counrty.

I had always thought the peasants in Europe had to be a little mad to accept their position in the feudal system based on the explanation that there king was some representitive of the divine will. Oh, but they were only peasants, how could they know. Now it is even more shocking to read about how some men transformed their ideas for the destruction and manipulation of the natural world into yet another madate of the divine. I guess it worked really well to serve their ends but how could those so called civilized people of the time swallow this without even questioning it? If these violations of the wild were indeed the will of the God of the white man, how did they manage to convert so many native americans to believe in their teachings?

To me the most terrible idea was the shown in the illustration on pg. 164. This grid seems a little too much like some giant game, with its elite players carving up the sections where their pieces will play out the remainder of someone elses dream.

After reading this chapter, I started to understand why this book is named as "america as second creation" as authors indicates God created our natural lands, we uses these natural resources to create our own tools, as we started to develop our own technology, at the mean time we are transforming this land into our own creation, America. By laying out the grid of the railroad we are actually developing the market inbetween places to places. It is an interesting perspective how the author see America as a second creation because we used tools to built this country. I started to understand why author compared America as a technology creation,

I also thought it was very interesting that there was so much opposition to the railroads and such because they weren’t natural. People were concerned with how these changes would affect the landscape. They were concerned with what these developments would do to the natural environment. I think this is pretty common with new technology that people do not know much about and are not completely comfortable with yet. It takes a while for most people to get used to a new technology, whether it be understanding how to use it, deciding if the benefits outweigh the negatives, if it is something they really need to function in their everyday life, etc.; so when the railway system was proposed and but into construction people were skeptical. People fear the unfamiliar and this is no different of a scenario. As for them being afraid of how the construction would alter the landscape, I think they were making a valid point. The land at this time was very open and unused for the most part. Cities were centralized and not nearly as spread out as they are today. Therefore, people were afraid that their impact on the environment would be immense and they would not know how to solve it. I think this reflects our thinking today as well. People are skill skeptical of unknown technologies and how they will affect the environment. It is interesting to see how the attitudes then reflect our attitudes today.

What I find interesting about this chapter is that internal communication served as the catalyst for transportation. As a result, canals came to existence. I couldn't help but compare what drives our need to improve technology. Is it internal communications? Is it money? If not, then what is it? Further, I agree with Jennifer when she says that the railroad really pioneered how transportation has evolved today. It's amazing how many forms of transportations there are. And I'm sure we're not done yet.

What I thought was really amazing is the effect of railroads in the West. The fact that railroads were the cause of new cities implies how influential a source of transportation can be. In addition, the people's preception of nature back then is also very interesting. People believed that nature was not complete and it was the humans' resposibility to "complete" this nature that was given to us from the higher power. If you take a closer look, it is almost as if the people viewed their lives through the technology. In other words, the more technology they had access to the better their lives were. Nevertheless, bettering nature was the "god given" goal of people back then and you can see how much that had changed in the bast couple of centuries. Maybe they related better technology to happiness and becoming happy is our ultimate desire.

An important point in this part of chapter 7 is that the rivers normally only allowed travel north and south, while the railroad cut across vast amounts of land from east to west.

As some of you have already mentioned, the railroad and the development that came along with it, was thought of as natural. One line that shows this well was on page 157, "Nature was not being invaded or destroyed but awakened". Nature was "sleeping" and now that people were able to travel to more parts of the land nature could "wake up" and become what it was intended to become. This is a simple and narrow way of looking at the railroad expansion west, and completely different than what is mentioned in chapter 8.

America experienced an unexpected byproduct with the evolution of transportation shifting from steamboats and canals to railroads. People discovered that towns could be established almost anywhere along the tracks of a railroad. With the ability to order supplies at such great convenience, many towns thrived and America saw a progression from what canals and steamboats started. Although the canal allowed the commerce of the United States to flourish, the railroad helped not only the economy, but it helped our country expand from primarily the east coast to westward lands that were seldom traveled.

Many settlers did not even wait for the entire railroad line to be constructed, rather, they settled on the part of the railroad that had been constructed and lived happily regardless of whether the line was finished or not. Some even took this a step further and settled in areas where railroads were thought to be going. In this day and age we have nothing to compare the mentalities of these people to. It is harrowing to imagine how much we would be set back if the railroad had not caught on as quickly as it did. This is not to say there was not resistance, but once the benefits were seen, it made a great deal of sense to almost everyone. Would we have relied more heavily on roads and canals if the railroad were not popularized? If so, would that have changed our mentality about the crowded roads we have today?

While reading this piece I kept thinking of America as something that didn't have the ability to move good and other technology, however it was as if the railroad acted as some kind of vascular system that was able to breath life into the U.S.. This then started to awaken the industrial giant that the U.S. became in a short amount of time, kind of as though those who created the railways were creating a monster, much like Frankenstein created his monster.
As far as the nature aspect of the chapter, it is kind of shameful that people viewed nature in the sense that it wasn't good enough and should be developed... however has this view really changed in developed cities over time? I always see the city expanding and new condo's/business buildings being erected left and right.

It is unbelievable to me that Americans during this time do not think of the benefits the trains can do for the nation but only for individual communities and states. Today we think about the nations economy frequently and how it can be improved, not just our local economies. It is interesting to think that Americans of this time had no idea how much of an impact the train would make on the nations.

I also think it is interesting how transportation such as the train and canals created towns around them rather then connecting large cities. Perhaps this is why these transportation methods are not used frequently anymore. In Europe they have express trains between major cities such as Paris and London. So why do we not have something like this between say Minneapolis and Chicago? There is an express train between New York and Boston, but why are they so few and far between? Are they just not as needed in America as they are in Europe?

I thought it was interesting that Whitman thought the development of the railway system in the United States would make our nation the "center of the world." Was this development a key factor in our progression toward becoming an influential super power internationally? Perhaps it marked the beginning of a pattern of ambition for bigger, better, and more efficient products and services.
The railroads had a great, maybe even the greatest, impact on the social, economic, and geographic basis of the United States. The railroad decided where and what cities would be successful and flourish. The railroads connected the vast nation and created a faster means of transporting products. It is needless to say that our country would be very different today if railroads had never been in existence.

As I wrote in my essay, I believe that the railroad not only connected the people of America physically, but also heightened the American citizen’s National identity. As written about on page 157, the railroad “has given people with the boundless resources of their own soil.” I say this because it connected all Americans to each other, whether the connection consisted because of the mail, newspapers or visitors, the connection was now there. And this connection would slowly be spreading throughout the Country, led by the railroad. I also liked how chapter 7 elaborates on the how the railroad was the key to westward expansion. “The railroad opens the way for the axe, the plow, villages, factories and towns.“ (page 160) This is a good point. The clearing process itself was a job, hence other jobs and towns followed. And for those reasons I feel that the locomotive led the Americans with the western frontier. Small towns forming gradually to the west that would eventually become larger, and these towns would spawn other towns, and so on.

I thought it as interesting that the railroad was a means for expansion even as it was an expansion itself. It grew and life that was affected by it grew exponentially. I suppose it is something like the dot com boom in the 1990's. It's funny that the railroad isn't of equal value today, road and highways and interstates seem to be just as much work to build as railroad ways. It's potential for mass public transportation could be part of a solution for the current climate problems we're experiencing caused by automobiles.

When you look at the development of the United States and Minnesota particularly you can really get a feeling on how the railroads effected the development of this great nation. For example in Minnesota there where many towns in the Southwestern part of the state, and when those towns where founded the railroad was the main reason that the town was located where it was. The main staples of those new boomtowns were a railroad station and an elevator to move the wheat crop to a particular market. When a town didn’t have these two staples the town became a ghost town. So much of the development of Southwestern Minnesota in the early 1900s relied on the railroads. This same situation was occurring across the United States, the railroad was the focal point for the development across the nation. As a young nation it is amazing how much we relied on the railroad, barges, and other new innovations.

The impact the railroad had on the west was amazing and the narratives are extremely convincing at getting that point across. The reading mentioned that the stories are illogical due to the fact that they convince you that the railroads were the first thing to encounter the west. They leave out the part that forests needed to be paved and workers homed.

It is an interesting read nonetheless. The west was developed from ‘top down’ unlike the east, which was developed from ‘bottom to top’. The east began with settlers and thus built roads, canals and railroads. On the other hand, the west basically began with the railroads and the engineers who designed them. Once the railroad was in place, the people came. People were provoked by the future economic gains brought on by the railroad.

People regarded railroads, as which other technology of the time, as works of art and enhanced the beauty of the natural world. By colonizing the Americas, they finished what the ‘1st creator’ had led them to do. That’s how they rectified it.

I find it very interesting how people of the time shared the view point that development was a natural progression. It seems like such an oxymoron; natural colonization, or natural industrialization. How can anything man do be natural? But then again is the human element not part of nature? In what ways are we doing our job to “complete nature” by building railroads and canals or mapping the human genome? What defines the difference in natural and synthetic?

It is obvious that the railroads did do many things to advance the settlement of the U.S. (mainly the inland regions) Railroads became the arteries that gave rise and supported new life. The tracks became something far beyond a mode of transportation. They developed into the lifelines of early american settlement. But was there a better way? What where the negative effects of the railroad? What other views can be taken? Was this development just for developments sake?

Being born in a small town and never having to move, it never crossed my mind how my town was settled. I mean my parents moved there for a reason and decided to settle, but how did they make that decision. Was it based on the railroad system—probably not. I am guessing they settled because of the farmland and how easy it was to transport crops to our town/near by elevator. Thinking about my great-grandparents though, they probably made their decision based on the railroad.

Almost every town was settled based on the early form of transportation—railroad. It was changing the land and towns were thriving off of the train’s schedule and stops. There were even mail-order homes and such. Towns were popping up where ever the railroad company wanted to place them—wouldn’t it be cool to be the person who decides where the next town would be.

In reading the second part of chapter 7 railroads are the main focus. Railroads were really responsible for the western growth of the United States. They connected everything together. It’s a wonder to think of how fast the progress was in the building back then. The railroad companies had land that was granted to them from the government to sell. Today we see big construction projects and building and housing developments that seem go up rather quickly especially if you are used to seeing the area in its prior state. I can’t even imagine the quickness of construction in the towns established along the railroad. It seems as if it were “false advertising” to lure prospective settlers to an area of supposed great beauty and wealth only for them to later find out there is only two other families and three building in the area upon arrival. The natural settling was to be conquered and “used” for its intended purpose according to the thought of the time. The title of the book comes several times in the reading. The second creation of America was the development and the establishing of towns and settlers along the railroad. This is the supposed use that God had originally created this landscape for. I also found it interesting that even at those initial stages people were worried that the railroad companies would sell and develop all of the land and there wouldn’t be any left to farm. I think that’s interesting from a perspective of more than a hundred years later. Many farmlands are now being developed and used as housing and retail stores yet no one seems to worry now as they did at the first steps of settlement.

It is really interesting to me how the railroad shaped the geography of the western United States. As many others have written in their posts the railroad appeared first in the western U.S. and played an enormous part in creating cities in the west. In the central United States the cities were already there and the railroad was brought to this region to bring supplies to these cities. I believe that the railroad was one of the first examples of society relying on a technology. Today we all rely on some type o f transportation technology for most of us it is the car. I think in the coming years we will see people looking at the popularity of the railroad and trying to capture that excitement with some new mass transportation technology in the United States, such as more express trains or something along those lines.

I think the railroad really served as the connecting point between communities. Not only did is help transport economic goods, but it also transferred people across the nation. Many of the immigrants who settled this state often road the railroad from the coast to their final destination. I know my hometown was built because of the railroad. Many of my relatives settled in that area because of the railway. It’s really amazing how vital the railroad was to the town commerce. In fact, the railroad was the reason for my town’s settlement. It turned a village into a town. The railroad was also important for businesses. For instance, back when my hometown was in its “golden age” business was booming. There was a general store, creamery, building supply store, blacksmith/repairman, and even a hotel! The railroad really was a modern innovation at the time of its inception.

I found that Nye's writings about the Erie canal to be very interesting. He explains how the canal was built and how the funding was finally provided by the state of New York.

After the canal was built and opened, the financial success of the endeavor seemed to win over the skeptics that originally thought the canal would fail.

This seemed apparent when the railroad was becoming popular and talk of placing a railroad from Boston to New York.

Instead of welcoming the new technology, people seemed to reject it in favor of their beloved, successful canal.

Nye mentions Josiah Strong’s retrospective account of the technological advancements that had taken place from 1800 to 1885, noting how those living in 1800 wouldn’t have known of the railroad or steamboat among much else. With respect to the railroad, especially, which, by 1885, had become so fundamental to the notions of second creation and national economic fecundity as to become second nature regarding its correlation which such things, the expansion of towns and cities and new industrial possibilities that emerged according to its westward routes forecasted the next major migration that would take place over the next 85 years (1885-1970): urbanization (and then suburbanization). Just as the rail sustained and made possible the untold number of cities and towns that sprung up along its routes, the automobile made it possible to live where industry was thriving (in cities, where jobs could be found) while also providing a means by which people could travel elsewhere without having to rely on train schedules. Doubtless the car, as it quickly overtook the train as this country’s primary people-mover, destroyed many of the cities and towns that its predecessor helped create. I, of course, assume that the continued existence of many of these rail-dependent towns relied upon the assumption that rail was and always would be the arteries of America’s economy. When this no longer was the case (and it wasn’t for very much longer), the resulting effects may have been devastating for many such places.

The train definatly puts things into perspective with the notion of technology and our lack of enthusiasm. For about... sixty years..? the train was considered the best invention to tie the country together. It was controversial yes, but provided rapid transportation from east to west that no other vehical had achieved yet. It made towns prosperity dependent upon whether or not a rail station would be built. All of this happened so fast, it was very alluring at first, then the car came and took over the Trains glory. Today... I look at a train, one of hundreds or even thousands i have seen, and think nothing of it. Why would I want to travel by train when I could just as easily fly, or even drive. I think the train fits well with our discussion of how fast techonology changes, therefore we forget how amazing an invention acutally is--we become used to it very quickly. This is exactly what happened with telephones.. iPhones... technology seems to be following a certain trend.