boom town
The Golden Spike |
This ride has two cars that represent the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railways. The two cars will race to the Golden Spike at the finish and the winner will be random every time. The Union Pacific hired mostly Irish workers and sometimes placed 250 miles of track in six months. They faced harsh weather on the Great Plains and there was always pressure on them to get their work done efficiently. The Central Pacific hired mostly Chinese workers where they were paid about $30 a month. It was harder for them to place the track down because the Sierra Nevada Mountains required carefully controlled explosions using nitroglycerin. The two completed rail lines connect in Promontory, Utah on May 10, 1869. |
Exoduster |
The Exoduster is a rollercoaster that goes up and suddenly drops down like the population in the south after 20,000-40,000 African Americans moved to the south in 1879. They wanted a life free of discrimination where they could own land that they could farm themselves. Exodusters were southerners that made a mass exodus from the south. An Exoduster could also be a sodbuster which was the name for the Plains farmers that broke up sod. Plains farmers also began to use dry farming in the 1890s which helped them conserve water because the crops they grew did not depend so much on it. |