Iron Rails, Iron Men, and the Race to Link the Nation The Story of the Transcontinental Railroad...

8/20/2019 Iron Rails, Iron Men, and the Race to Link the Nation The Story of the Transcontinental Railroad Chapter Sampler

1/37


2/37

I ON ILS,


3/37


4/37


5/37


6/37


7/37


8/37


9/37


10/37


11/37


12/37


13/37


14/37


15/37

2

of the Unite States in an unhear -of thirty ays while traveling at the

incredible” speed of ten miles an hour. A transcontinental railroad, Barlow

declared, would be “the greatest public work . . . that mortal man has ever

yet accomplishe .”

Some ten years later, a wealthy New York usinessman name Asa

Whitney, a distant relative of Eli Whitney, who had invented the cotton

gin, actually petitioned Congress for the building of such a railroad. Asidefrom linking the nation, Whitney saw another enormous benefit that a

transcontinental railroa woul ring. He ha ma e much of his fortune

y selling his pro ucts to China an ringing ack such wante goo s as

tea, spices, and silk. But he had been forced to endure the long months it

took to exchange these products between East Coast ports and Asia by

ship. A railroa to West Coast ports, he eclare , woul make the long an

often angerous ocean voyage to Asia much shorter an much more prof-

ta le. It woul , in fact, open up the lucrative China tra e to all American

erchants.

Whitney did everything he could to convince Congress to authorize

the railroa he envisione . He even offere to uil it at his own expense if

he was given enough lan in the West that he coul then sell. Determine

to prove that it could be done, he organized an expedition into the vast ter-

itory to explore the best possible route for his railroad to take.

It was all in vain. Even those few congressmen who believed that it just

ight e possi le for such a railroa to e uilt coul not agree on sup-

porting Whitney. Southern congressmen insiste that it take a southern

oute. Others said that they could not even consider such a project unless

the railroad passed through their city or state.

Whitney, Dexter, an Barlow were ut three of at least a score of


16/37

3

in ivi uals who, in the 1830s an 1840s, ma e their feelings known a out

the enormous benefits a transcontinental railroad would bring to the

nation. But understanding what such an iron road would do for the country

was one thing; eing a le to uil it was quite another.

The vast majority of government officials an almost all private citizens

shared the same opinion: it simply couldn’t be done. In response to a claim

that a transcontinental railroad would “create settlements, commerce and wealth,” the Cincinnati Dai y Gazette declared that those making this claim

might just as well e promising “to unite neigh oring planets in our solar

system an make them etter acquainte with each other.”

It was not difficult to understand why the newspaper’s editors felt

this way. The nation’s existing railroad lines went no farther west than

the Missouri River. The istance from that point to the Pacific was 1,800

miles. It wasn’t just the staggering istance, though. Every railroa that

ha ever een uilt ha een constructe to connect one city or town to

another inhabited area. But between the Missouri River and the Pacific

Ocean, except for significant Native American communities and Salt Lake

City, there was not a single settlement of any real size. It was, as a Boston

newspaper escri e it, “a ig lank slate.” A transcontinental railroa , if

it could somehow be built, would be the first railroad ever constructed in

advance of civilization.

And that was not all. Construction crews would have to lay tracks over

some of the most ifficult terrain on earth. Hun re s of miles of searing

esert woul have to e crosse . Even more challenging, as one early

railroad historian wrote, “Any transcontinental railroad must cross two

mountain chains popularly regarded as impossible barriers. Still fresh in

the memory of emigrants who crawle westwar were mountain trails so


17/37

4

steep that wagons ha to e lowere y rope. . . . Moreover, little was

known of the principles of traction. Only a few years earlier, even engineers

generally believed that gravity would defy any attempt to drive a locomo-

tive uphill.”

In or er to uil a railroa through these mountains, the highest

bridges ever erected would have to be built. Tunnels through mountains of

pure granite would have to be constructed. All this had to be accomplished without bulldozers, rock drills, or modern explosives. A transcontinental

ailroa woul have to e uilt entirely y han .

There were no trees on the hun re s of miles of the American prairie

to use for railroad ties. There were no factories or foundries to manufac-

ture rails anywhere near where the tracks would be laid. The millions of

ailroa ties, the miles an miles of iron rails, the enormously heavy steam

locomotives, an almost everything else that woul e require woul

have to e shippe to the uil ing sites — from the east across the Missouri

River, from the west all the way around Cape Horn in South America, a

fifteen-thousand-mile voyage by sea.

An if this was not enough to iscourage even the most ar ent pro-

ponent of a railroa that woul link the nation, there were other enor-

ous challenges as well. Prominent among them was the weather that

was certain to be encountered. On the plains, temperatures were known to

ise to well over one hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Tornadoes destroyed

verything in their path. In the mountains, temperatures roppe as low as

thirty egrees elow zero an snow pile up as high as sixty feet. An over

iles and miles of the territory that would have to be crossed was the spec-

ter of what most struck fear into the hearts of all those who dared venture

nto the West — tens of thousan s of Native Americans etermine to keep


18/37

5

intru ers from encroaching upon lan that was still their own. No won er

that when photographer and civil engineer John Plumbe sent his own pro-

posal for a transcontinental railroad to Congress, one congressman stated

that Plum e’s request was as far-fetche as asking the government “to

uil a railroa to the moon.”

Well into the 1840s, the i ea of a transcontinental railroa seeme an

impossible one. Some of the nation’s leading figures made a point of ques-

tioning the value of linking the heavily settled and “civilized” East with

what they viewe as the sparsely settle , untame West. Among them was

We er Canyon, Utah. America’s mountain ranges wou present the greatest cha enges in the creation of a transcontinenta rai roa .


19/37

6

Massachusetts’s legen ary senator Daniel We ster. “What o we want

with this region of savages and wild beasts, of deserts, of shifting sands

nd whirlwinds of dust, of cactus and prairie dogs,” Webster asked his

fellow senators. “To what use coul we ever put these en less mountain

anges? . . . What coul we o with the western coastline three thousan

iles away, rockbound, cheerless and uninviting?”

Strong words, but in a nation still less than one hundred years old,things were changing rapidly. By 1850, California had developed to a point

where it was a mitte as a state. Oregon an other western territories

stoo poise to e a mitte as well. Perhaps most important, gol ha

been discovered in California. “Gold fever” gripped the nation. Thousands

of people from every part of the country, seeking to get rich, dropped what-

ver they were oing an hea e for the gol fiel s. Some spent months

walking all the way to California. Others went on horse ack or in wagon

trains. Those who coul affor the high price of a ticket ma e the six-to-

ine-month voyage by sailing vessel or steamship. Many others who had

far less money boarded any type of vessel that would float. It was a phe-

omenon that laste throughout the 1850s an one that the government

oul not help ut notice. What if there ha een a cross-country railroa

over which these thousands of fortune seekers could have traveled? What

f such a railroad had made it possible for the government itself to take

dvantage of the gold and particularly the other minerals that were being

uncovere ?

Su enly the moo of the government change . Reasons for uil -

ng the railroad, including those first articulated by early visionaries like

Asa Whitney, were revisited. They were perhaps expressed most clearly

n a report commissione y the California state senate. “A railroa , from


20/37

7

some point on the Mississippi, or its tri utaries, to some point on the ay of

San Francisco,” the report stated, “is the best route that can be adopted for

the purpose of securing the Commerce of China or India. . . . It would also

e the means of great aily intercourse etween the East an West coast of

this Repu lic. . . . It is the uty of this legislature to encourage the spee y

building of a Railroad from the Atlantic to the Pacific, across the territory

of the United States.”In 1856, a special committee of the Congress concluded that “the neces-

sity that exists for constructing lines of railroa an telegraphic communi-

cation etween the Atlantic an Pacific coasts of this continent is no longer

a question for argument; it is conceded by every one.” An 1853 article in

the widely read Putnam’s Month y Magazine actually foresaw the commit-

tee’s fin ings. “A railroa from the Mississippi to California or Oregon is

a foregone conclusion,” the article state . “Stupen ous as the enterprise

seems, rivaling in gran eur an surpassing in usefulness any work that the

genius of man has hitherto undertaken . . . it has been decided that it must

be built. . . . Surveying parties, appointed by the Government to explore

the routes are alrea y on the groun .” The surveyors ha a most impor-

tant assignment. The question of what route the railroa shoul take ha

become as vital an issue as whether the railroad should be built.

In March 1853, in an attempt to answer the question, the government

instructed the secretary of war, Jefferson Davis, the man who seven years

later woul ecome presi ent of the southern states in re ellion against

the Unite States, to organize four separate surveying expe itions to eter-

mine which route would be the most “practicable and economical” to the

Pacific. Each of the expeditions was a remarkable undertaking. Just one

of them alone, le y army lieutenant Amiel Weeks Whipple, inclu e


21/37

8

seventy men, 250 mules, an a long train of large freight wagons. Whipple’s

scientific staff included not only surveyors but also geologists, botanists,

stronomers, naturalists, and artists. As one journal would later report,

Not since Napoleon ha taken his company of [scholars an experts] into

Egypt ha the worl seen such an assem lage of scientists an technicians

arshalled under one banner.”

The surveying expeditions’ findings were published in a twelve- volume set of books that contained detailed assessments of whether the

lan they ha explore woul provi e a suita le path for a railroa . The

ooks were also fille with many maps an artists’ rawings an escrip-

tions of wildlife, plants, and trees, as well as the Native American peoples

they had encountered.

It was a marvelous achievement, provi ing the nation with the greatest

mount of knowle ge a out the geography of the West it ha ever receive .

But as far as the government was concerne , it was also a major isappoint-

ent. For in the end it was determined that none of the routes that had been

xplored was suitable for the building of the iron road. Ironically, the discov-

ry of this vital route woul come a out not through the en eavors of hun-

re s of surveyors an scientists, ut through the extraor inary efforts of

two men, each very different from the other, operating half a continent apart.

Among those who had read the sur veyors’ reports with great interest

was a twenty-eight-year-old civil engineer named Theodore Judah. With

the help of one hun re workers, he ha just supervise the construction

of California’s first railroa line in the foothills of the Sierra Neva a. When

the twenty-one-mile-long line was completed, Judah had gone to the presi-

dent of the new line and urged him to let him extend the line much farther.

But, aware of the towering Sierra Neva a that lay ahea , the presi ent


22/37

9

turne him own. There was no way, he tol Ju ah, that a railroa coul

be built through those mountains.

By 1853, when the route-seeking surveys had begun, Judah had joined

the ranks of those who elieve in the necessity of a transcontinental rail-

roa . He ha in fact ecome o sesse with the i ea. He seeme to talk

about it to anyone who would listen, so much so that, out of earshot, those

around him began to refer to him as “Crazy Judah.”But Theodore Judah was not crazy. He was a visionary. And he was a

realist as well. The Unite States nee e a transcontinental railroa , an

more than anything, he wante to e a ig part of its construction. He was

well aware that of all the incredible challenges that building a railroad from

coast to coast would present, the greatest would be laying tracks through

the seemingly impenetra le Sierras. An he knew that a route through

those mountains ha to e foun . The route woul have to take into

account rilling an lasting tunnels through soli -granite peaks, creating

roadbeds around the peaks that were too long to be tunneled through, and

constructing towering bridges over the Sierras’ rivers and valleys.

Fin ing a route through the Sierras was a task that woul have imin-

ishe the resolve of a less etermine man. But Ju ah was convince that

such a route could be found. He began by hiking into the Sierras, spending

days, even weeks living out in the open, enduring rain, wind, and, in the

higher elevations, ice and driving snow. He mapped out a route, noting

where tunnels, roa e s, an ri ges woul nee to e constructe .

At last he reache a point where he elieve he coul offer proof that

a railroad through the Sierras could be built. But, as he well knew, finding

a route was only the first step. Nothing could happen unless the enormous

amount of money nee e to finance the project coul e raise .


23/37


24/37

11

Between 1856 an 1859, Ju ah ma e three trips to Washington hoping

to persuade the government to supply the funds. To support his argument,

he wrote and published, at his own expense, a pamphlet titled “A Practical

Plan for Buil ing the Pacific Railroa .” He even set up a one-room Pacific

Railroa Museum in the Capitol that inclu e paintings of the areas over

and through which his proposed railroad would travel, maps of prelim-

inary routes he was considering, and geological specimens he had dis-covered. But by 1859, Congress had much more serious matters on its

agen a. Despite the many ifferent compromises that ha een attempte ,

the northern an southern regions of the nation ha grown further apart

over the fact that slaveholders in the South refused to give up their slaves.

Things had reached a boiling point, and the southern states were threat-

ening to sece e from the Union. After all his efforts, Ju ah’s proposal fell

on eaf ears.

He i not give up. If he coul n’t get fun ing from the government, he

would try to get it from private sources. In 1860, intent on producing an

even more detailed map of his proposed route through the mountains, he

went ack into the Sierras. He not only create a highly etaile map that

he felt woul attract investors, ut he also solve what he ha previously

considered to be the one troublesome problem in his mapping. He was not

satisfied that he had found the best route for tracks to be laid through the

treacherous Donner Pass. But here fortune smiled on him. In the midst of

his new mapping, he receive a letter from a ruggist name Daniel Strong

in which Strong offere to show him a way through the pass that woul

accommodate a railroad. Guiding Judah through the pass, Strong led the

way to a ridge between two deep river valleys. A delighted Judah immedi-

ately realize that the ri ge was wi e enough for tracks to e lai upon it.


25/37

12

Convince that he ha mappe out a practical route through what he

believed would be the most difficult terrain of all in constructing a trans-

ontinental railroad, Judah drew up a document establishing a company

to uil a railroa . He name it the Central Pacific Railroa Company. He

ha a name ut no money to ack the company. In Novem er of 1860,

t a meeting of potential investors in a room above a Sacramento hard-

ware store, four wealthy men agreed to put up the money necessary to getthe Central Pacific Railroad Company started. Their names were Charles

Crocker, Collis Huntington, Mark Hopkins, an Lelan Stanfor .

They were a iverse group of in ivi uals. Crocker was an experience

nd effective organizer of projects and men. Hopkins was an astute busi-

essman. Stanford was a lawyer, who also had significant political influ-

nce. But it was Huntington who woul eventually really run the Central

Pacific while the transcontinental railroa was eing uilt. It was he who

woul assume the critical role of seeing to it that supplies reache the

Central Pacific work crews whenever and wherever they were needed.

And it was he who would also continually lobby Congress for more finan-

ial support for the Central Pacific.

Although Ju ah ha his initial fun ing, he still nee e the govern-

ent’s support. Again he headed for Washington, hoping to at last convince

the government to give him the bulk of the money his new company still

eeded. This time he got a very different reception because the nation’s

political situation ha change ramatically. The South ha in ee sece e

from the Union; the Civil War ha egun. No longer were there Southern

ongressmen in Washington committed to blocking any cross-country rail-

oad that took a northern route.

Most important, the new American presi ent, A raham Lincoln,


26/37

13

was a strong champion of a transcontinental railroa . Though many in

Congress were opposed to undertaking such a costly and difficult proj-

ect in the midst of a civil war, Lincoln believed that, just as the war was

eing fought to unite the North an the South, an iron roa across the

country woul in East an West. It woul make Americans across the

nation feel like one people. “A railroad to the Pacific Ocean,” he stated,

“is imperatively demanded in the interests of the whole country. . . . TheFederal Government ought to render immediate and efficient aid in its

construction.”

On July 1, 1862, Lincoln put that “imme iate an efficient ai ” into

law when he signed the Pacific Railway Act. It authorized the Central

Pacific Railroad to lay tracks from Sacramento to 150 miles beyond the

California-Neva a or er. An it create a whole new company to e

calle the Union Pacific Railroa Company. It woul lay its rails west-

war until the two companies joine tracks. The government woul pay

each company $16,000 for each mile of track it laid in flat territory and

$32,000 for each mile of track laid in the mountains. In addition, for each

forty-mile section of track it complete , each company woul e given

thousan s of acres of government-owne lan that it coul sell to people

who wanted to settle on it. With one stroke of his pen, Abraham Lincoln

had made the construction of a transcontinental railroad a reality.

President Lincoln had done something else as well. By authorizing

the Central Pacific to egin laying its tracks eastwar an creating the

Union Pacific to set own rails westwar , he ha set the stage for an

extraordinary race to see which company would lay the most miles of

track before the two sides of the country were linked. It would become

the most ramatic an most heral e race the nation ha ever known.


27/37

14

As the Pacific Railway Act became law, the United States Congress

ssue a proclamation pu licly thanking Theo ore Ju ah for having ma e

the act possi le. But gratifie as he was, Ju ah knew that the real work

was just beginning. Informing his new partners that the railroad bill had

been passed, he said, “We have drawn the elephant, now let us see if we

an harness him up.”

With Stanfor as presi ent, Huntington as vice presi ent, Hopkins as

treasurer, an Crocker as construction supervisor, the Central Pacific’s

Big Four appeared to be the perfect team to make the vision of a trans-

ontinental railroad a reality. As Huntington would later write, “Each [of

us] complemente each other in something the other lacke . There was

Stanfor , for instance, a man . . . who love to eal with people. He was a

goo lawyer. There was Mark Hopkins. He was a thrifty man. Then, there

was Crocker, the organizer, the executive, the director of men.” Huntington

himself, who would become the real boss of the company, possessed a

worl of usiness knowle ge.

BI

F UR


28/37

15

As much as the Big Four believed that the nation should have a

cross-country railroa , they also wante to make as much money out of

the project as they possi ly coul . An they were willing to use any means,

no matter how devious, to enrich themselves. To his dismay, Judah real-

ized that it had been easier to chart his way through the mountains than it

would be to overcome the unbridled greed of the men with whom he had

allie himself.

From the eginning, the Big Four hel meetings without Ju ah’s

knowledge. They didn’t want him to know about the dishonest things

they were planning to do. Soon after Leland Stanford became president of

the Central Pacific, he was electe governor of California. Almost imme-

iately he use the power of his office to illegally transfer more than a

million ollars of state fun s into the Central Pacific’s treasury. An Collis

Huntington, knowing that the Central Pacific would be paid according to

the number of miles of track it laid, began to make plans to bribe geologists

to grossly overstate how many miles of rail the company set own.

Picture from eft to right: Le an Stanfor , Co is

Huntington, Mar Hop ins,

an Chares Croc er


29/37

16

By the fall of 1863, Ju ah ha ha enough. Appalle y his colleagues’

behavior, he left for San Francisco and sailed to New York, where he hoped

to find new investors who would buy the Big Four out. If the railroad that

Ju ah ha set in motion ha een in place, his trip woul have een a rela-

tively quick an easy one. But in the fall of 1863, his est option was to sail

to Panama, take a train to the Atlantic coast of that isthmus, and then travel

by ship to New York. Tragically, while crossing Panama, Judah contracted the dreaded

yellow fever. He ecame so ill that when he arrive in New York, he was

taken on a stretcher irectly to his hotel. It was while he was lying there

that the first rails of the Central Pacific line were laid. But Judah never

heard about it. The man who had made it all possible died before the news

oul reach him.

Charlie Crocker, the construction supervisor, woul e on the scene

for the entire uil ing of the great iron roa . He took to his new jo with

passion. He had never worked in construction, but he had spent several

years in the California mining fields, where he had earned a reputation for

toughness an for taking on any task, no matter how ifficult. “I ha all the

xperience necessary,” Crocker woul later state. “I knew how to manage

en; I had worked them in the ore beds, in the coal pits, and worked them

ll sorts of ways, and had worked myself right along with them.” At his side

was construction boss James Strobridge, who was equally demanding of

the la or force.

James Stro ri ge an Charles Crocker ha an enormous pro lem. The

Central Pacific’s board of directors had failed to supply them with a large

nough labor force. Crocker had managed to hire a number of unemployed

Irishmen, ut there were only five hun re of them, an every week more


30/37

17

an more of them su enly left to seek their fortunes in the Neva a silver

mines. A desperate Crocker tried to solve the problem by placing an adver-

tisement in the California newspapers. “Wanted,” it read. “5,000 laborers

for constant an permanent work, also experience foremen. Apply to J. H.

Stro ri ge, Superinten ent. On the work, near Au urn.”

He got only a few hundred responses. Most able-bodied men were

off in the mountains, hoping to strike it rich in the silver mines. Moredesperate than ever, Crocker came up with an idea. There were more

than fifty-five thousan Chinese people living in California. Tens of thou-

san s ha een lure there y the gol strikes in the late 1840s an early

1850s. When the gold ran out, many had taken jobs as laborers, garden-

ers, domestic workers, and fishermen. Because the Chinese population

referre to their homelan as the “Celestial King om,” Californians

calle them Celestials. An ecause of ifferences in the way they

looke , spoke, an con ucte themselves, most of them ha een vic-

tims of racial prejudice and discrimination. But not even their detractors

could deny that Chinese men had a great capacity for work.

Crocker wante to hire them for the Central Pacific, ut he ran into

stiff opposition from Stro ri ge, who elieve that most Chinese men

were too small and too fragile to tackle such heavy and exhausting work.

Besides, stated Strobridge, they knew nothing about building a railroad. “I

will not boss Chinese,” Strobridge declared.

Crocker ha a rea y answer. “They uilt the Great Wall of China,

i n’t they?” he respon e . “An people who coul o that ought to e

able to build a railroad.” Finally, the two men reached a compromise.

They would hire fifty Chinese laborers on a trial basis and see how they

worke out.


31/37


32/37


33/37

20

When the first Chinese men ar rive , Stro ri ge, convince that they

were too frail to swing heavy sledgehammers or pickaxes, put them to work

doing simple tasks such as filling dump carts. Surprised at how quickly

they carrie out their tasks without a hint of complaint, Stro ri ge eci e

to test them further y having them attempt to prepare a roa e on which

tracks could be laid. The result was even more surprising to him. The road-

bed the Chinese workers laid down was longer and much smoother thanthe ones the Irish workers had been able to construct. Then Strobridge

eci e to put the Chinese to the ultimate test y having them last rock.

Not only i they han le this angerous assignment without a hitch; they

ctually seemed to enjoy it. Reporting on what he had seen these initial

Chinese laborers accomplish, one of Crocker’s engineers stated simply,

The experiment has prove eminently successful.”

Convince that they ha foun the solution to their serious la or pro -

lem, Stro ri ge an Crocker sent agents throughout the Pacific coast

seeking to find as many Chinese workers as they could. They also con-

tacted agents who specialized in finding laborers overseas and commis-

sione them to o tain Chinese workers for the Central Pacific. It woul

e a time-consuming process an it woul not e until January 1865

that Chinese laborers would join the CP’s ranks in great numbers, but

ventually more than ten thousand Chinese men would make up almost

0 percent of the Central Pacific’s workforce.

Hiring the Chinese workers turne out to e the most important

ecision the Central Pacific ma e in meeting the challenges of uil -

ng the transcontinental railroad. The Chinese men were not only mag-

ificent workers; they were also more dependable and more willing to

take on any task, no matter how ifficult or angerous, than almost any


34/37

21

of the others who la ore on

the great road. And there was

something else, something that

was also extremely important.

Throughout the almost seven

years of the transcontinental ’s

construction, the Chinese men would remain far healthier than

most of the other workers. It was

pro a ly ecause of their iet

and habits. The food that the

Irish workers ate was supplied

to them y the Central Pacific. It

consiste mostly of eef, eans,

an potatoes. There were no

fresh vegetables. It was hardly

a healthy diet. The Irishmen

quenche the constant thirst

that arose from their heavy

labors by drinking from the

streams and lakes they encoun-

tered. The water was often brackish and full of harmful bacteria. Many of

the Irish workers woul lose time on the jo as a result of the ysentery

they got from rinking the tainte water.

The Chinese diet was altogether different. Even though, because of

the prejudicial feelings of the times, the Chinese were paid less than the

Irish, each of their work crews hire its own cook. One of his uties was to

Chinese wor ers transport cart oa s of irt as they con uct gra ing operations in an

area of the Sierra Neva a nown as Prospect Hi .


35/37

22

purchase a wi e variety of healthy foo s from the Chinese istricts in San

Francisco and Sacramento. The workers’ diet included fish, bean sprouts,

ushrooms, rice, and cabbage. The cooks even kept pigs and chickens so

that on weeken s fresh pork, acon, an poultry coul e serve .

Equally important, the Chinese la orers never rank water irectly

from the streams and lakes. Instead, they drank hot tea. It was a good

drink of choice because boiling the water for it removed bacteria and otherharmful elements. The tea was carried to the work sites in huge barrels

suspen e from each en of a am oo pole alance on the shoul ers of

special mem ers of the crews calle tea oys.

Thanks to the Chinese workforce, the labor problem that had so

plagued the Central Pacific had been solved, and in a way that neither

Stro ri ge nor Crocker nor the other irectors of the CP coul have ever

hope for. Among those who recognize what the Chinese workers meant

to the CP was the company’s presi ent, Lelan Stanfor . For years he ha

bitterly opposed Chinese immigration. Now he publicly proclaimed that it

would be of great benefit if at least half a million Chinese were allowed to

mme iately enter the country.

On January 8, 1863, still long efore Chinese workers egan join-

ng the CP’s ranks, the Central Pacific officially began laying tracks.

Thousands of Californians traveled to Sacramento to look on as Leland

Stanford ceremoniously shoveled the first load of dirt, signifying the

eginning of the laying of a roa e (calle gra ing) for the first sec-

tion of tracks. On Octo er 26, 1863, another milestone took place when

Strobridge’s men spiked the CP’s first rails to their ties. But this time

there was no ceremony. Even this early on, it had become all too clear

that eing a le to lay tracks over an through the mountains was far


36/37

S

i

e

r

r

a

N

e

v

a

d

a

S a

c r a m

e

n

t o

R

i

v

e

r

future Bloomer Cut North Fork American River

Folsom

Fo lsom Lake

Auburn

Sacramento

Lake

Tahoe

C A L I F O R N I A

San Francisco

South Fork American River

CENTRAL PACIFIC

RAILROAD

N20 m0

23

from a certainty. The ecision to omit a ceremony was ma e y Collis

Huntington. “If you want to jubilate in driving the first spike, go ahead

and do it. I don’t,” he had telegraphed Crocker. “These mountains look

too ugly an I see too much work ahea . We may fail an I want to have as

few people know it as we can an if we get up a ju ilation any little no o y

can drive the first spike, but there are many months of hard labor and

unrest between the first and the last spike.”

e entra ac

ts ong, cu t tr

ay ng n acrame

a orna, a t er

set up ts ase cam

ts construct on cr

Au urn.


37/37

Iron Rails, Iron Men, and the Race to Link the

Nation: The Story of the Transcontinental RailroadMartin W. Sandler

dl i k
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/iron-rails-iron-men-and-the-race-to-link-the-nation-martin-w-sandler/1121069195?ean=9780763665272http://www.amazon.com/Iron-Rails-Race-Link-Nation/dp/0763665274/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=1-1&qid=1429717928http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780763665272

Iron Rails, Iron Men, and the Race to Link the Nation The Story of the Transcontinental Railroad...

Documents

Transcript of Iron Rails, Iron Men, and the Race to Link the Nation The Story of the Transcontinental Railroad...