In the 19th century, before the transcontinental railroad, no railroad went further west than St. Joseph on the Missouri border. Theodore Judah went west and began to build the first railroad tracks in the Sacramento Valley in 1854. He hoped one day that his tracks would be connected to a transcontinental railroad. The biggest obstacle was the Sierra Nevada Mountains, but a man named Doc Judah showed him a route that could take the railroad through the Sierras. In 1861 he went to pitch his idea to congress, but congress was occupied elsewhere. Lincoln liked the idea and singed a bill in 1862 giving the Central Pacific the right to build the rail east from Sacramento and the Union Pacific to build west from the Missouri river. The legislation