In 1849 it took 166 days to travel coast to coast. By the 1860’s you could do it in 60 days. A decade later a train could make the trip in 11 days. By 1923 an airplane could do it in 26 hours and by 1975 that was cut to 5 hours. Today, the Space Shuttle does it in 8 minutes.
Following the discovery of gold in California in 1848 Americans were
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