5 ms·

This was such an interesting article! The only nitpick item I'd mention: isn't kind of crappy that the U.S. gov. gave the Union Pacific railroad pretty much a

This was such an interesting article! The only nitpick item I'd mention: isn't kind of crappy that the U.S. gov. gave the Union Pacific railroad pretty much a monopoly of that 200-foot right of way piece of land? I mean, i could understand if the railroad used it for their own uses, which from a functional perspective, i understand and agree...But for this railroad to turn around and authorize others - and I'm sure they charge everyone for this! - to then use that land, just seems sort of unfair. I understand that it's "convenient" for other entities to only work with that single entity; but that still seems a monopoly to me. So, forevermore, the Union Pacific railroad will get money for use of this land, that they were given so many years ago; well, that sucks.

dnautics 7y ago
by contrast, the great northern railroad was built without land grants.
- Aloha 7y ago
  yes, by that time private capital was interested in funding a rail line, this however was the first one
CydeWeys 7y ago
It was the reward for building the railroad in the first place.
- mxuribe 7y ago
  I guess I sort of assumed that the revenue the railroad would receive from trains traversing its rails would be sufficient income, and wouldn't need any additional land. I mean, these railroads do have a captive customer base, since their customers can't just "choose" another railroad provider. (Hmm, this is beginning to sound like our cable-centric ISPs.) So, is all this (that is, the historically crazy high revenues that railroad companies have brought in) where the term "robber barons" comes from?
  - throw0101a 7y ago
    Except that you couldn't get the revenue from the railroad until the railroad was built... which would be difficult without land. Connecting the entire country was probably considered a 'strategic' decision rather than just a commercial venture. See also interstate highway system. Governments often subsidize early efforts in areas that they deem are maybe important to have a lead in the future. See also ARPAnet / Internet.
    - mxuribe 7y ago
      Oh, I'm not arguing against the need for land. The greater vision makes sense to me. Certainly, the need for land (for railroads, etc.) is essential, plus a little more land on the sides as a buffer - no argument there. Also, connecting the country - whether via rail or highway systems - is absolutely strategically essential. And, in fact, i happily pay reasonable taxes (yes, happily!) for such useful infrastructure like this (assuming this tax revenue is utilized appropriately without corruption)...Because everyone ideally wins in this kind of revenue. Furthermore, I also agree that government subsidizing efforts like rail, highway, post, and arpanet/internet systems are vital as a foundation for any country - either for gov. services or for businesses/economies to prosper upon...I'm just only nitpicking about that little extra, tiny bit of land that UP railroad company is getting tons of free revenue from (by leasing to datacenters). Oh well, this is all said and done anyway.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    > So, is all this (that is, the historically crazy high revenues that railroad companies have brought in) where the term "robber barons" comes from? In the modern American sense, absolutely yes. Standard Oil and all that lot. Further back there were literal robber barons with castles on the Rhine charging illegal tolls to shipping.
mc32 7y ago
Had it not been granted to UP, likely then we wouldn’t have this nice uninterrupted east-west throughway for transport of goods and data. It’s rather a nice consequence of having granted them right of way in return for developing a railway. It’s better than an alternative patchwork. One just need look at the problem with right of way for the California HSR to see having a right of way is important for progress.
- mbrumlow 7y ago
  Why could have the government not held on to the right-of-way and allow people to bid/buy or allocate it? Making it so the money went back to the government NOT some 3rd party at a profit?
  - duxup 7y ago
    Because the railroad company would have been far less or simply not interested in building the railroad. The right of ways were a reward for the upfront costs the railroad incurred for building the network. The transcontinental railroad and other railroads were investments for the future. A lot of short wonky rail networks were the only railroads being built and those weren't going to reach across the country.
    - mbrumlow 7y ago
      duxup thanks! This makes sense to me. It was more about enticing the railroad to build the thing than anything in the long run. That makes perfect sense to me.
  - mc32 7y ago
    Well then today it’d be a hodgepodge as well as we’d have discontinuous sections all owned and governed by multiple entities some of which might not care to share or accommodate fiber, for example.
  - Aloha 7y ago
    The government reaped the value the railroad created for all of the other lands it held, beyond that, consider that the government used to give away up to 160 acres of land to anyone who was willing to homestead it, and improve it. As in literally free - the land without the railroad had considerably less value at that time.
pjc50 7y ago
One of billions of examples. The anti-government stance of the US leads naturally to delegating things that in other countries would be public to random private entities. Sometimes this works well, where the private entity has an incentive to market the asset and make it useful. Sometimes it doesn't. Both can be true of the same asset at different times.
kilo_bravo_3 7y ago
It isn't crappy, it was necessary. The 200-foot right of way was so that construction materials could be gathered from either side of the route of the track, to build the track itself. In 1862, the midwest was practically empty and most of the land was federal land. The construction crews may have been hundreds, if not thousands, of miles from the nearest quarry or gravel pit. >SEC. 2 . And be it further enacted, {Right of way granted.} That the right of way through the public lands be, and the same is hereby, granted to said company for the construction of said railroad and telegraph line; and the right, power, and authority is hereby given to said company to take from the public lands adjacent to the line of said road, {See Sec. 3, 1864 .} earth, stone, timber, and other materials for the construction thereof; said right of way is granted to said railroad to the extent of’ two hundred feet in width on each side of said railroad, where it may pass over the public lands, including all necessary grounds for stations, buildings, workshops and depots, machine shops, switches, side tracks, turn-tables, and water stations. {U. S. to extinguish Indian titles. sec. 18, 1864 .} The United States shall extinguish as rapidly as may be, the Indian titles to all lands falling under the operation of this act, and required for the said right of way and grants hereinafter made. Also, in the early days of steam locomotives a train had to stop every seven miles for water. That meant that every seven miles a water tower and the equipment to fill the water tower had to be built. If right of way, and all of that free land hadn't been granted, there would have been no transcontinental railroad. One of the first "real" railroads, the B&O railroad, was created by the governments of Maryland, Virginia, and Ohio and had a very similar legislative deal (though that didn't prevent years of litigation by canal companies to stop the railroad) to deal given to the companies covered by the 1862 Act the because it is impossible to build a railroad unless the land is given to the constructor for free. Looking forward, if the government gets behind the colonization of Mars or some other place, the deals will be the same "Hey Company X, build all of this crap on Mars and we'll give you the entire northern hemisphere" and then 200 years later people will be upset about the fact that Company X was given half of Mars.
- Aloha 7y ago
  I think that 7 mile number is low, I think its more like at least 50 if not 100 miles, by the time the transcon line existed.
- 7y ago
davidw 7y ago
> monopoly of that 200-foot right of way piece of land? If you think that's bad, look at these squares of land: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_and_California_Railroad_Revested_Lands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_and_California_Railroad... You can still easy pick out this land in satellite photos: https://www.google.com/maps/@43.9007308,-123.4338901,37529m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@43.9007308,-123.4338901,37529m/...
alexhutcheson 7y ago
200 feet is tiny in the scope of the American West. If anyone else wanted to build a railroad, telegraph line, etc. somewhere else, they were free to do so, and there were plenty of routes to choose from. Many did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcontinental_railroad#Subsequent_transcontinental_routes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcontinental_railroad#Subs... The reason the UP/CP right-of-way was attractive to telegraph lines, fiber, etc. was that they had already done all the hard work of clearing, grading, building infrastructure to make it accessible, etc. It makes sense that they were allowed to charge for others to benefit from the improvements they made.
gumby 7y ago
They could have granted temporary access to the resources never for construction, but they wanted the railways to be incentivized to build stations and the like -- the purpose of the road wasn't only to connect the two terminal points but to provide access to as much of the land inbetween as possible. It was a colonial effort for land that was considered essentially terra nullus (compare to the colonial rail construction in India a lot of which went through settled land). Plus where the road went through somewhat settled areas, this provided an opportunity for land speculation, which was the plot of many stories both contemporary and later.

dnautics 7y ago

by contrast, the great northern railroad was built without land grants.

Aloha 7y ago
yes, by that time private capital was interested in funding a rail line, this however was the first one

CydeWeys 7y ago

It was the reward for building the railroad in the first place.

mxuribe 7y ago
I guess I sort of assumed that the revenue the railroad would receive from trains traversing its rails would be sufficient income, and wouldn't need any additional land. I mean, these railroads do have a captive customer base, since their customers can't just "choose" another railroad provider. (Hmm, this is beginning to sound like our cable-centric ISPs.) So, is all this (that is, the historically crazy high revenues that railroad companies have brought in) where the term "robber barons" comes from?
- throw0101a 7y ago
  Except that you couldn't get the revenue from the railroad until the railroad was built... which would be difficult without land. Connecting the entire country was probably considered a 'strategic' decision rather than just a commercial venture. See also interstate highway system. Governments often subsidize early efforts in areas that they deem are maybe important to have a lead in the future. See also ARPAnet / Internet.
  - mxuribe 7y ago
    Oh, I'm not arguing against the need for land. The greater vision makes sense to me. Certainly, the need for land (for railroads, etc.) is essential, plus a little more land on the sides as a buffer - no argument there. Also, connecting the country - whether via rail or highway systems - is absolutely strategically essential. And, in fact, i happily pay reasonable taxes (yes, happily!) for such useful infrastructure like this (assuming this tax revenue is utilized appropriately without corruption)...Because everyone ideally wins in this kind of revenue. Furthermore, I also agree that government subsidizing efforts like rail, highway, post, and arpanet/internet systems are vital as a foundation for any country - either for gov. services or for businesses/economies to prosper upon...I'm just only nitpicking about that little extra, tiny bit of land that UP railroad company is getting tons of free revenue from (by leasing to datacenters). Oh well, this is all said and done anyway.
- pjc50 7y ago
  > So, is all this (that is, the historically crazy high revenues that railroad companies have brought in) where the term "robber barons" comes from? In the modern American sense, absolutely yes. Standard Oil and all that lot. Further back there were literal robber barons with castles on the Rhine charging illegal tolls to shipping.

mc32 7y ago

Had it not been granted to UP, likely then we wouldn’t have this nice uninterrupted east-west throughway for transport of goods and data. It’s rather a nice consequence of having granted them right of way in return for developing a railway. It’s better than an alternative patchwork. One just need look at the problem with right of way for the California HSR to see having a right of way is important for progress.

mbrumlow 7y ago
Why could have the government not held on to the right-of-way and allow people to bid/buy or allocate it? Making it so the money went back to the government NOT some 3rd party at a profit?
- duxup 7y ago
  Because the railroad company would have been far less or simply not interested in building the railroad. The right of ways were a reward for the upfront costs the railroad incurred for building the network. The transcontinental railroad and other railroads were investments for the future. A lot of short wonky rail networks were the only railroads being built and those weren't going to reach across the country.
  - mbrumlow 7y ago
    duxup thanks! This makes sense to me. It was more about enticing the railroad to build the thing than anything in the long run. That makes perfect sense to me.
- mc32 7y ago
  Well then today it’d be a hodgepodge as well as we’d have discontinuous sections all owned and governed by multiple entities some of which might not care to share or accommodate fiber, for example.
- Aloha 7y ago
  The government reaped the value the railroad created for all of the other lands it held, beyond that, consider that the government used to give away up to 160 acres of land to anyone who was willing to homestead it, and improve it. As in literally free - the land without the railroad had considerably less value at that time.

pjc50 7y ago

One of billions of examples. The anti-government stance of the US leads naturally to delegating things that in other countries would be public to random private entities. Sometimes this works well, where the private entity has an incentive to market the asset and make it useful. Sometimes it doesn't. Both can be true of the same asset at different times.

kilo_bravo_3 7y ago

It isn't crappy, it was necessary. The 200-foot right of way was so that construction materials could be gathered from either side of the route of the track, to build the track itself. In 1862, the midwest was practically empty and most of the land was federal land. The construction crews may have been hundreds, if not thousands, of miles from the nearest quarry or gravel pit. >SEC. 2 . And be it further enacted, {Right of way granted.} That the right of way through the public lands be, and the same is hereby, granted to said company for the construction of said railroad and telegraph line; and the right, power, and authority is hereby given to said company to take from the public lands adjacent to the line of said road, {See Sec. 3, 1864 .} earth, stone, timber, and other materials for the construction thereof; said right of way is granted to said railroad to the extent of’ two hundred feet in width on each side of said railroad, where it may pass over the public lands, including all necessary grounds for stations, buildings, workshops and depots, machine shops, switches, side tracks, turn-tables, and water stations. {U. S. to extinguish Indian titles. sec. 18, 1864 .} The United States shall extinguish as rapidly as may be, the Indian titles to all lands falling under the operation of this act, and required for the said right of way and grants hereinafter made. Also, in the early days of steam locomotives a train had to stop every seven miles for water. That meant that every seven miles a water tower and the equipment to fill the water tower had to be built. If right of way, and all of that free land hadn't been granted, there would have been no transcontinental railroad. One of the first "real" railroads, the B&O railroad, was created by the governments of Maryland, Virginia, and Ohio and had a very similar legislative deal (though that didn't prevent years of litigation by canal companies to stop the railroad) to deal given to the companies covered by the 1862 Act the because it is impossible to build a railroad unless the land is given to the constructor for free. Looking forward, if the government gets behind the colonization of Mars or some other place, the deals will be the same "Hey Company X, build all of this crap on Mars and we'll give you the entire northern hemisphere" and then 200 years later people will be upset about the fact that Company X was given half of Mars.

Aloha 7y ago
I think that 7 mile number is low, I think its more like at least 50 if not 100 miles, by the time the transcon line existed.
7y ago

davidw 7y ago

> monopoly of that 200-foot right of way piece of land? If you think that's bad, look at these squares of land: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_and_California_Railroad_Revested_Lands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_and_California_Railroad... You can still easy pick out this land in satellite photos: https://www.google.com/maps/@43.9007308,-123.4338901,37529m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@43.9007308,-123.4338901,37529m/...

alexhutcheson 7y ago

200 feet is tiny in the scope of the American West. If anyone else wanted to build a railroad, telegraph line, etc. somewhere else, they were free to do so, and there were plenty of routes to choose from. Many did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcontinental_railroad#Subsequent_transcontinental_routes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcontinental_railroad#Subs... The reason the UP/CP right-of-way was attractive to telegraph lines, fiber, etc. was that they had already done all the hard work of clearing, grading, building infrastructure to make it accessible, etc. It makes sense that they were allowed to charge for others to benefit from the improvements they made.

gumby 7y ago

They could have granted temporary access to the resources never for construction, but they wanted the railways to be incentivized to build stations and the like -- the purpose of the road wasn't only to connect the two terminal points but to provide access to as much of the land inbetween as possible. It was a colonial effort for land that was considered essentially terra nullus (compare to the colonial rail construction in India a lot of which went through settled land). Plus where the road went through somewhat settled areas, this provided an opportunity for land speculation, which was the plot of many stories both contemporary and later.