Transcontinental Railroad Study Practice

Match the following

• Homestead Act

• Chinese Immigrants

• Union Pacific Railroad

• Irish Immigrants

• Central Pacific Railroad

• 160 acres of free land to farm

• The Dawes Act

• Split up Indian property/reservations into individual areas

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

• Chinese worker experience

• Promontory Summit, Utah

• Year the railroad was completed

• 1869

• Native American experience

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

• Where the two railroad companies met to complete the railroad

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

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.