(Leonardo Chiti)
02/22/17

If the regions of the Far North (North-East and Middle-West), and the South, were the architects of independence and consolidation of US power, the West Coast was the star, from the first steps, to its internationalization, launched with the acquisition of a projection capabilities supported by an oceanic naval force, which became naval Air during the first half of the '900.

Between the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, the United States became part of the international concert of great powers, within which will conquer a hegemonic position during three decades marked by two world wars. These historic steps have formed as many moments of acceleration for the economic development of the West coast, whose industrialization had received a new impetus in the aftermath of the Civil War, in combination with population growth due to migration of the "go west", and more arrivals from Asia and South America.

In this framework it is ripe for the birth and the affirmation of the West Coast shipbuilding which in turn has provided support as an active part of the rise of the US to the first world power.

The metallurgical company Union Iron Works was founded in 1849 by brothers Peter, James and Michael Donahue, who set their foundry in a shed in the South San Francisco area. Irish immigrants arrived in California at the beginning of the "gold-rush" of 1848-1855, the Donahue, after a brief stay in the camps of hunters, had opened a workshop where they worked as blacksmiths.

In those years, San Francisco went from a few hundred inhabitants in 1848 to 36,000 in 1852, thus registering a significant increase of population that had its turning point in 1849, with a strong leap in the incoming immigrant in a fever gold that were called "forty-niners", nickname became one of the symbols of local tradition, as to be taken for the name of the football team of the city.

A milestone in the path of economic and demographic development of California - which has become the 31st state of the United States September 9, 1850 - it was in 1869, with the completion of the first transcontinental railway line that will link the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, extending the two paths existing connecting San Francisco to Sacramento, for the west side, and Omaha, Nebraska, in Boston, Massachusetts, on the east coast.

The project dates back to 1845 but only on 1 July 1862, Congress passed the measure sbloccava federal funds allocated for this work, and authorize the Union Pacific Railroad to build a railway line heading west from Omaha, while the Central Pacific Railroad of California got the go-ahead for the stretch that had to meet him starting from Sacramento.

The Central Pacific, which employed mainly Chinese labor, put about a thousand kilometers of track and met the greatest difficulties on the mountain passes of the Sierra Nevada. The Union Pacific workers teams, composed largely of Irish immigrants and veterans of the Civil War, they were dealing with a less harsh territory, having to cross the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains, which compared to the coastal ranges are oldest formation and thus more transformed by the atmospheric agents which tend to be rounded contours. In return he had to alternate the use of picks, hammers and shovels, to that of rifles and guns, to repel the attacks of the Indians, coming to lay 1,700 km of railway track.

The celebration ceremony for the meeting of the two lines, which were combined with a golden bolt, occurred May 10, 1869 at Promontory Point, near Ogden, Utah. In the next fifteen years were built three lines of railway connection coast-to-coast: the Southern Pacific linking Los Angeles to Boston through the Sun Belt, was inaugurated in 1883, the same year the Northern Pacific opening which connected Portland, in ' Oregon, the Atlantic coast, linking up to the height of the great lakes with the Canadian Pacific (completed in 1885), which was from the city of Quebec, capital of the French-speaking province of eastern Canada, in Vancouver, on the Pacific.

More:

http://www.difesaonline.it/evidenza/approfondimenti/lindustria-aeronavale-californiana-e-la-nascita-di-una-grande-potenza-nella

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I did not bother with this translation.

IZAKOVIC