The Pacific Railway Act of 1862 is Signed into Law

The Pacific Railway Act of 1862 (12 Statutes at Large, 489), as enacted by the United States Congress, was approved and signed into law by the President, Abraham Lincoln, on July 1, 1862. Officially entitled "AN ACT to aid in the construction of a railroad and telegraph line from the Missouri river to the Pacific ocean, and to secure to the government the use of the same for postal, military, and other purposes," some provisions of the original Act were subsequently modified, expanded, and/or repealed by four additional amending Acts passed in 1862, 1864, 1865, and 1866.

Based largely on a proposed Pacific railroad bill originally reported six years earlier on August 16, 1856, to the 34th Congress (1st Session) by the Select Committee on the Pacific Railroad and Telegraph, the Act as passed in 1862 authorized both the making of extensive land grants in the Western United States, and the issuance of 30-year, 6% U.S. Government Bonds, to the Union Pacific Railroad and Central Pacific Railroad (later the Southern Pacific Railroad) companies in order to construct a transcontinental railroad. Sec. 3 of the Act granted 10 square miles (26 km²) of public land for every mile laid except where railroads ran through cities and crossed rivers. This grant was apportioned in 5 sections on alternating sides of the railroad, with each section measuring one fifth of a mile in length by 10 miles in height. The Bonds were authorized by Sec. 5 to be issued at the rate of $16,000 per mile of tracked grade completed West of the designated base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains (CPRR) and East of the designated base of the Rocky Mountains (UPRR). It also provided in Sec. 11 that the issuance of bonds "shall be treble the number per mile" (to $48,000) for tracked grade completed over and within the two mountain ranges (but limited to a total of three hundred miles at this rate), and doubled (to $32,000) per mile of completed grade laid between the two mountain ranges The U.S. Governmen...

The Pacific Railroad Act, passed by Congress in 1862 (12 Stat. 489), authorized the construction of the first transcontinental railway line connecting the east and west coasts. The need for a transcontinental railway to facilitate transportation of persons and products across the United States became increasingly clear in the 1850s due to the acquisition of California and the resolution of the Oregon boundary dispute
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Transcript of Pacific Railway Act (1862)

CHAP. CXX. — An Act to aid in the Construction of a Railroad and Telegraph Line from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean, and to secure to the Government the Use of the same for Postal, Military, and Other Purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That Walter S. Burgess, William P. Blodget, Benjamin H. Cheever, Charles Fosdick Fletcher, of Rhode Island; Augustus Brewster, Henry P. Haven, Cornelius S. Bushnell, Henry Hammond, of Connecticut; Isaac Sherman, Dean Rich- mond, Royal Phelps, William H. Ferry, Henry A. Paddock, Lewis J. Stancliff, Charles A. Secor, Samuel R. Campbell, Alfred E. Tilton, John Anderson, Azariah Boody, John S. Kennedy, H. Carver, Joseph Field, , Benjamin F. Camp,Orville W. Childs, Alexander J. Bergen, Ben. Holli- day, D. N. Barney, S. De Witt Bloodgood, William H. Grant, Thomas W. Olcott, Samuel B. Ruggles, James B. Wilson, of New York; Ephraim Marsh, Charles M. Harker, of New Jersey; John Edgar Thompson, Ben- jamin Haywood, Joseph H. Scranton, Joseph Harrison, George W. Cass, John H. Bryant, Daniel J. Morell, Thomas M. Howe, William F. John- son, Robert Finney, John A. Green, E. R. Myre, Charles F. Wells, junior, of Pennsylvania; Noah L. Wilson, .Amasa Stone, William H. Clement, S. S. L'Hommedieu, John Brough, William Dennison, Jacob Blickins- derfer, of Ohio; William M. McPherson, R. W. Wells, Willard P. Hall, .Armstrong Beatty, John Corby, of Missouri ; S. J. Hensley, Peter Donahue, C. P. Huntington, T. D. Judah, James Bailey, James T. Ryan, Charles Hosmer, Charles Marsh, D. 0. Mills, Samuel Bell, Louis McLal1e, George W. Mowe, Charles McLaughlin, Timothy Dame, John R. Robinson, of California; John Atchison and John D. Winters, of the Territory of Nevada; John D. Campbell, R. N. Rice, Charles A. Trow- bridge, and Ransom Gardner, Charles W. Penny, Charles T. Gorham, William McConnell, of Michigan; William F C...