ShmoopTube

00:00

[ musical flourish ]

00:03

And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by the caboose,

00:06

the part of the train reserved for ghost passengers.

00:10

Ooh.

00:11

Yeah, that's the spirit.

00:12

Okay.

00:13

The railroad built through Kansas in the mid-19th century

00:16

developed primarily... how?

00:19

And here are your potential answers. [ ding ]

00:24

All right. A railroad isn't very useful if there's

00:27

nobody around to use it. It's like that tree falling in the woods.

00:30

At the same time, people aren't gonna uproot their lives

00:33

and move to the middle of nowhere if there isn't any infrastructure to support them.

00:37

Let's see which answer best captures that dilemma.

00:40

Did the railroads in Kansas develop primarily

00:43

A - after the state had a sizeable population?

00:46

Well, actually, most of these railroads were built for the

00:49

early adopters, the trailblazers

00:51

who would settle the land before the masses came.

00:54

Were the railroads built in Kansas B -

00:56

despite the opposition against them in Congress?

01:00

Well, knowing that reliable transportation was necessary

01:03

for westward expansion, Congress passed several

01:05

Pacific Railway Acts in the 1860s

01:09

which gave huge land grants to homesteaders

01:11

and railroad companies.

01:13

So we know it can't be B or C.

01:15

Which means the Kansas railroads developed primarily

01:18

D - due to land incentives for railroad companies

01:22

and homesteaders. Moving west and setting up new towns

01:25

was a pretty risky business,

01:27

so Congress offered sweet deals to railroad companies

01:30

and homesteaders willing to take the plunge.

01:33

Pretty easy to follow that train of thought, right?

01:35

[ chuckles ]

Full Transcript