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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
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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
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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
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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 .
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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
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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
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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
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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 .
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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.
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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,
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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 .
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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
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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.
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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/9780763665272Top Related