Panama

The alternative to traveling between the east and west coasts by stagecoach or wagon was to go by water. In 1849 the journey around the tip of South America took between 180 and 300 days by sail. The gold rush created such a demand for passage by water to California that the cost rose as high as $1,000. The physical and temporal remoteness of the western states created a scarcity of goods and news that raised the local price of both: one traveler to California took 1,500 copies of the New-York Tribune and other newspapers that he purchased in New York City for pennies a copy and sold them in California over the course of two hours a dollar each. Improved information about winds and currents that was made available by 1851 enabled mariners to reduce voyages to San Francisco from on average 187.5 days to 144.5 days, and a fast clipper ship could make the voyage in about 110 days. As more vessels sailed the route, the cost of passage fell to around $100.

The 1850s also saw the development of ground transport across the Isthmus of Panama – part of Colombia, which was then called New Grenada – to avoid sailing around South America and shorten the travel time. Initially the journey by way of Panama took six weeks, but by the early 1850s it had dropped to three or four weeks. Travel across Panama was further facilitated by the construction of 47 miles of railroad, ocean to ocean, completed in January 1855. When regular operations began, the trip by rail generally took three hours. Passengers, mail, and freight traveled in both directions, and on a number of occasions the locomotives and rolling stock moved 1,500 passengers, US mail, and the freight of three steamers across the isthmus in half a day. By 1860 steamships made the trip from New York to Panama in eight or nine days and from Panama to San Francisco in about ten days. The Panama railroad also became a significant transfer point for cargoes and passengers moving between other Pacific and Atlantic destinations.