Immigrant Labor on the

Pacific Railroad

Christopher MacMahon

Background and Thesis Why study immigrant laborers?

What types of jobs were they performing?

What were their living conditions like?

Thesis: Although many historians argue the Chinese laborers had a more difficult

experience during the construction of the Pacific Railroad, when one considers the tasks being performed by laborers, the living conditions of these laborers, and the environments in which these laborers were living, the Irish laborers had the worst experiences of immigrant laborers constructing the Pacific Railroad.

Finding Labor

Sacramento Union January 1865 Nevada, Placer, Plumas, and

Sacramento counties had 29,844 males age 20-40.

“Nothing was scarcer in California than labor in 1865.”

Central Pacific’s solution: Chinese

The end of the Civil War created a readily available work force in the east. John Joseph McGlinchey

Omaha’s population doubled in 1865 to 15,00 due to the influx of U.P. laborers.

1

2

3

6

4

5

Grading the Line

6

7

Right-of-way had to be cleared 100 foot clearing

25 feet on either side of track needed to be completely clear of all rock and vegetation.

Once cleared, the ground must be graded and leveled for the track. All work done with pick, shovel, and

wheelbarrow.

Tunnel Boring

8

Track Laying

Central Pacific in Nevada Union Pacific in Nebraska

9 10

Bridge Construction Temporary wooden trestles would

be constructed to progress the tracks ahead, and later replaced by masonry.

“There was no boat within reach of us or any ford... The only practical way was for someone to swim across… I let myself down into the water, which on touching bottom, proved to be several feet over my head in depth. This proved to me that I sure enough had some swimming to do.” Charles Sharman at North Platte

Crossing

11

12

13

Union Pacific Living Conditions

Dormitory Cars “Hell on Wheels”

1514

Raids on the Union Pacific Attacks by Sioux and Cheyenne

were commonplace during construction. Gen. Grenville Dodge

Charles Sharman

16

17

Central Pacific Living Conditions

1819

Conclusion

Chinese Job Duties

Grading, Tunneling

Diet Meats, fish, grains, vegetables, fruits

and tea.

Environment Sierra Nevada Mountains, High Desert

of Nevada and Utah

Life Tents/Cabins, Clean, Healthy, Conflict

Free

Irish Job Duties

Grading, Track Laying (UP & CP), Tunneling, Bridge Building

Diet Meat, bread, beans, potatoes, water.

Environment Great Plains, Rocky Mountains, Wasatch

Range, High Desert of Utah.

Life Dormitory cars, unsanitary, attacks by

Natives, bounty hunters, gun fights.

Citations1. Central Pacific Railroad, “Wanted” (advertisement), Sacramento Daily Union, January 7, 1865.

2. United States Department of the Interior. Population of the United States in 1860; Compiled from the Original Returns of the Eighth Census, Under the Direction of the Secretary of the Interior, by Joseph C.G. Kennedy, Superintendent of Census. 38th Congress, 1st Session, House Miscellaneous Document (Washington, D.C., 1864), 30.

3. George Kraus, “Chinese Laborers and the Construction of the Central Pacific,” Utah Historical Quarterly 31, no. 1 (Winter 1969), 43.

4. Robert Michael Collins, Irish Gandy Dancer: A Tale of Building the Transcontinental Railroad (Create Space Independent Publishing, 2010): 32-33, Kindle.

5. Stephen Ambrose, Nothing Like it in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 167.

6. Lawrence & Houseworth, Grading the Central Pacific Railroad, Sailor’s Spur and Fill 12 Miles Above Alta, Placer County, Circa 1865, Society of California Pioneers Photography, San Francisco, CA.

7. John Hoyt Williams, A Great and Shining Road: The Epic Story of the Transcontinental Railroad (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 114-115.

8. Ibid.

9. Alfred A. Hart, Track Laying in the Great Salt Lake Dessert, Circa 1869, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkley.

10. Unkown, Union Pacific Workers Laying Track at the 100th Meridian, October 1866, Eye Witness to History.

11. A. J. Russell, Dale Creek Bridge, Circa 1868, Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale.

12. Haycox, 28.

13. Ibid., 28-29.

14. Unknown, 19th Century Dormitory Car, Latin American Studies.

15. Unknown, Benton Wyoming Along the Union Pacific Line 672 Miles West of Omaha, 1868, Linda Hall Library, Kansas City, MO.

16. Grenville M. Dodge, How We Built the Union Pacific Railway and Other Railway Papers and Addresses (Council Bluffs, Iowa: Monarch Printing Company, 1910), 15.

17. Ernest Haycox, Jr., “A Very Exclusive Party: A Firsthand Account of the Building of the Transcontinental Railroad,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 51, no. 1 (Spring 2001), 30.

18. Alfred A. Hart, Central Pacific Crews at Camp Victory, West of Promontory Point, Utah, 1869, Linda Hall, Library, Kansas City, MO.

19. Alfred A. Hart, Heading of East Portal, Tunnel No. 8, 1866, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkley.