Infrastructure

The transportation infrastructure started booming during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. It started with the creation of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869. “ The transcontinental railroad is considered one of the greatest American technological feats of the nineteenth century,” (“First Transcontinental Railroad”). With the creation of the first automobiles occurring at the beginning of the 1900s, road and highway construction was soon to follow. Millions of dollars were set aside by local, state and federal government for the creation of roads and highways. The road system was good for the economy by allowing the trading of goods to take place. In 1904 the Army Corps of Engineers began building the Panama Canal. This would allow travel time to be cut by 8000 miles between the east and west coast to allow for the easier trading of goods. Soon after that, the United States Postal Service began to build airports throughout the country, which later became a huge building block for air travel.

While the transportation infrastructure was booming, the city sanitation services were not as successful. As a result of the large amount of immigrants coming into the United States, the city sewer and sanitation systems just could not keep up. This left many of the lower class people living in extremely overcrowded areas where the sewers would back up, and trash was unable to be collected leaving an awful odor in the air.