Essay --

The growth of agriculture and railroads in Texas and in the United States helped form our economy today. Railroads today pass through a lot of Texas, and even in big cities like Houston or Dallas. Since there are so many farms and open farmland (especially in south and west Texas), railroads can carry the produce and livestock to their destination. James Watt invented the first steam engine in about 1769, and from then on, railroads were a must for transportation, since cars had yet to be invented. Railroads began to be built before the Civil War. It originally took about 6 months to get from the west of the US to the east, but now it only took 7 days. With railroads expanding all across the country, agriculture was affected in a mostly positive way. Now, crops and other goods could be transported by train anywhere in the US, and fast. When Stephen F. Austin brought the â€Å"Old 300† to Texas, they got about 4,338 acres for grazing, and 177 acres for farmland and labor. This is where the first slave-based cotton plantation came into being. The Texas’ farms were starting to be a commercial business. Small family farms were becoming more frequent, and the livestock business became popular, all between 1836 and the Civil War in 1861. Cotton production generated most of the state’s agriculture production and sales. 58,000 bales were produced in 1850, but in 1860, there were 431,000! The number of slaves grew to more than triple as well, from about 58,200 to about 182,500. The whole population of Texas tripled too. It was kind of like a ‘Texas Cotton Rush’! There were many immigrants who settled in Texas. Some of those towns are still here today, such as New Braunfels, Brenham, and Boerne. Those are German towns. Also, immigrants from... ... could easily and (more importantly) quickly move from farms to cities to be sold. Even livestock could be carried by freight to reach markets across the country. The expansion of agriculture and railroads helped form Texas’s present economy. The invention of the steam engine not only allowed people to move across the country in 7 days, instead of 6 months, but it also allowed crops and livestock to be carried to markets and places where they would be sold anywhere in the country. They could be moved to another farm in Texas as well. Since it’s such a large state, railroads were a necessity for travel, and general transportation. The railroad-building boom lasted 40 years. The production of cotton in Texas introduced some of the first slave-based cotton farms, and was the dominant crop for a very long time. After this event, Texas’s economy was forever changed.