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Transcontinental travel

Completed 150 years ago this month, the railroad's construction was one of the great dramas in American history, and led to a notorious scandal.

While the Civil War raged on battlefields in the East, two armies fought a very different kind of war in the West.  The men working for two corporations that were said to be the wealthiest in America struggled to see who could finish a greater part of the transcontinental railroad before the two

What it was like for the first travelers

New York to Los Angeles in an unheard-of 48 hours! And what a way to go—luxuriously appointed planes, meals served aloft, and a window seat for every passenger

It was midsummer of 1929, and all seemed right with the world. Herbert Hoover was in the White House, riding high on a tide of prosperity and popularity.

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