Invention-Infrastructure+Advancements

[|Interesting Transportation Video]

[|Timeline on Roads]
 * Description of a key piece of infrastructure throughout history.

[|Federal-Aid Highway Acts]
 * Describes the government's active role in shaping the road system.

[|Transportation]
 * America On the Move

[|American System]
 * Clay's defense of his American System form the U.S. Senate website.

The construction of railroads was a vital method of anchoring the western states to the rest of the Union. The West, therefore, was able to gain both population and power, though it was still less powerful than the states of the East. Expanding rapidly after the Civil War, the utilization of a Transcontinental Railroad enabled goods and humans to spread easily into other, less populated areas. And, by linking the nation, a national market was created that would become the largest in the world.

[|Government Control of Railroads]
 * Explains the reasons for the first large-scale control of private businesses by the federal government.

