=194. A Faster Means of Travel.= The demand for means of rapid communication with the new West became strong. It was necessary to bind the new country firmly with the old. The "pony express" and the overland stage were too risky and too slow. [Sidenote: =California admitted as a state=] The number of people in California was increasing steadily. In 1850, two years after the discovery of gold, California with about one hundred thousand inhabitants was admitted as a state. The Homestead Law of 1862, by which settlers could easily obtain land, brought great numbers of farmers to the western plains. The first railway engine in the United States was built in 1830. Such engines had been in use in England for some time. The earliest railroads were very short. Seven companies owned the parts of the first line from Albany, New York to Buffalo. Now in the same number of great systems is included two-thirds of the mileage of the United States. [Illustration: A CALIFORNIA MINING CAMP OF '49] [Sidenote: =Rapid growth of railroads=] On March 10, 1869, the Union Pacific Railway, the first link between the Atlantic and the Pacific, was finally completed. There were then only a few short lines besides, west of the Mississippi. It was hard to find the large amounts of capital needed for railway building. Congress and the states helped the railroads by granting them many square miles of land along their rights of way. After 1869 the miles of railroad in the United States increased over seven times in twenty years. To-day (1920) seven great railways cross the mountains to the Pacific coast. [Sidenote: =Farming develops=] =195. The Growth of Farming.= The railroads brought thousands of settlers into the new regions. But it was no longer to hunt for gold. It was to build homes on the rich farm lands of the West. Miners, cattlemen, farmers, and permanent settlers crowded on the lands of the Indians. The regions occupied by the red men now became smaller and smaller. Nearly all the Indians were placed on reservations on land which the national government does not allow to pass out of their hands. [Sidenote: =Irrigation projects aided by the government=] The need of more and still more land brought the farmers to the dry slopes and plateaus of both sides of the Rockies. Here were vast regions which water would make productive. The government gave its support to great irrigation projects. Water was brought to the barren deserts and they became vast expanses of waving grain. [Sidenote: =Gold becomes more difficult to get=]