Transcontinental Railroad Study Practice

Match the following

• Central Pacific Railroad

• Split up Indian property/reservations into individual areas

• The Dawes Act

• Irish Immigrants

• Union Pacific Railroad

• Chinese Immigrants

• Homestead Act

• 160 acres of free land to farm

What two companies worked on the Transcontinental Railroad?

• Union Pacific and Central Pacific

• Union Pacific and Urban Pacific

• Central Pacific and Railroad Pacific

The Transcontinental Railroad went through the ______ ______ Mountains.

What hypothesis can you make about the family in the picture?

• They are eastern factory workers enjoying the day off.

• The settled west as part of the Homestead Act of 1862.

• They were German immigrants that farmed land in the east.

How did the railroad affect the lives of Native Americans?

• It decreased their isolation from American culture.

• It provided jobs for Native Americans so they could most off reservations.

• It decreased the buffalo population that Native Americans depended upon.

• It provided them access to markets for the goods they produced.

Railroads helped farmers by transporting their product to ______.

Match the following

• Where the two railroad companies met to complete the railroad

• Promontory Summit, Utah

• Year the railroad was completed

• Way of life was ruined because the buffalo were killed, and were forced to undergo assimilation.

• Native American experience

• Faced dangerous explosives, disease, starvation, and paid less than the Irish.

• Chinese worker experience

• 1869

After the completion of the railroad there were many changes to the land. Choose two examples of how the railroad negatively impacted the land and the environment.

• Cities decreased in size

• Pollution of the air and water

• Land was kept the way they found it

• Buffalo were killed to near extinction

• Immigration increased

Which of the following was negatively impacted by the completion of the railroad?

• Communication

• Native American life

• Economic opportunities

• Transportation

In 1865, around 15 million buffalo roamed the plains. In 1889, fewer than 1,000 buffalo were left in the United States. How did the American Indians react?

• They were angered; buffalo were a resource and they used the entire animal for lots of different things.

• They didn't worry about it; American settlers did not hunt the buffalo.

• American Indians felt the buffalo were not important.

• They were resourceful; they began hunting moose instead.