How did railroads impact the industrial revolution?
Similarly, it is asked, what was the impact of the railroad?
The steel highway improved the lives of millions of city dwellers. By the 1890s, the United States was becoming an urban nation, and railroads supplied cities and towns with food, fuel, building materials, and access to markets. The simple presence of railroads could bring a city economic prosperity.
Similarly one may ask, why was the invention of the railroads so important?
The railroads also played a vital role in the American Civil War. They allowed the North and South to move men and equipment vast distances to further their own war aims. Because of their strategic value to both sides, they also became focal points of each side's war efforts.
Historians argue over the fact whether railroads determined the pace of economic development in nineteenth-century America. They were liberating - increasing mobility and speed across the continent - as well as confining: they held the power of economic life and death over many communities, often abusing that power.