The First Transcontinental Railroad in the U.S.

was built across North America

in the 1860s, linking the railroad network of the eastern U.S. with California
on the Pacific coast. Finished on May 10, 1869 at the Golden spike event at
Promontory Summit, Utah, it created a nationwide mechanized transportation
network that revolutionized the population and economy of the American
West, catalyzing the transition from the wagon trains of previous decades to
a modern transportation system. It achieved the status of first
transcontinental railroad by connecting myriad eastern U.S. railroads to the
Pacific. However it was not the world's longest railroad, as the Canadian
Grand Trunk Railway (GTR) had, by 1867, already accumulated more than
2,055 kilometres (1,277 mi) of track by connecting Portland, Maine, and the
three northern New England states with the Canadian Atlantic provinces, and
west as far as Port Huron, Michigan, through Sarnia, Ontario.