First Transcontinental Railroad

The First Transcontinental Railroad (known originally as the "Pacific Railroad" and later as the "Overland Route") was a 1,907-mile (3,069 km) contiguous railroad line constructed in the United States between 1863 and 1869 west of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers to connect the Pacific coast at San Francisco Bay with the existing eastern U.S. rail network at Council Bluffs, Iowa. The rail line was built by three private companies: the original Western Pacific Railroad Company between Oakland and Sacramento, California (132 mi or 212 km), the Central Pacific Railroad Company of California eastward from Sacramento to Promontory Summit, Utah Territory (U.T.) (690 mi or 1,110 km), and the Union Pacific Railroad Company westward to Promontory Summit from the road's statutory Eastern terminus at Council Bluffs on the eastern shore of the Missouri River opposite Omaha, Nebraska (1,085 mi or 1,746 km).

Opened for through traffic on May 10, 1869 with the ceremonial driving of the "Last Spike" (later often called the "Golden Spike") with a silver hammer at Promontory Summit, the road established a mechanized transcontinental transportation network that revolutionized the settlement and economy of the American West by bringing these western states and territories firmly and profitably into the "Union" and making goods and transportation much quicker, cheaper, and more flexible from coast to coast.

Paddle steamers linked Sacramento to the cities and their harbor facilities in the San Francisco Bay until 1869, when the CPRR completed and opened the WP grade (which the CPRR had acquired in 1867-68 ) to Alameda and Oakland (MP 6). (Service between San Francisco [MP 0] and Oakland Pier [MP 6] was provided by ferry.) The CPRR eventually purchased 53 miles of UPRR-built grade from Promontory Summit (MP 828) to Ogden, UT (MP 881), which became the interchange point between trains of the two roads. The transcontinental line was popularly known as the Overland Route after the principal passenger rail service that operated over the length of the line until 1962.

History

The completion of a Pacific railroad marked the culmination of a decades-long movement to build such a line beginning as early as 1832 when Dr. Hartwell Carver published an article in the New York Courier & Enquirer advocating the building of a transcontinental railroad from Lake Michigan to Oregon, and in 1847 he submitted a Memorial to Congress entitled "Proposal for a Charter to Build a Railroad from Lake Michigan to the Pacific Ocean" seeking a charter to build such a road. In 1856 the Select Committee on the Pacific Railroad and Telegraph of the US House of Representatives began its Report recommending the adoption of a proposed Pacific railroad bill by stating that: "The necessity that now exists for constructing lines of railroad and telegraphic communication between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of this continent is no longer a question for argument; it is conceded by every one. In order to maintain our present position on the Pacific, we must have some more speedy and direct means of intercourse than is at present afforded by the route through the possessions of a foreign power."

Preliminary exploration

With strong congressional support and under the direction of the Department of War (then run by Jefferson Davis) the Pacific Railroad Surveys (1853â€"1855) were an extensive series of explorations of the American West to explore possible routes for a transcontinental railroad across North America. The expeditions included surveyors, scientists, and artists and resulted in an immense body of data covering at least 400,000 square miles (1,000,000 km²) on the American West. "These twelve volumes... constitute probably the most important single contemporary source of knowledge on Western geography and history and their value is greatly enhanced by the inclusion of many beautiful plates in color of scenery, native inhabitants, fauna and flora of the Western country." Published by the United States War Department from 1855 to 1860, the surveys contained significant material on natural history, including many illustrations of reptiles, amphibians, birds, and mammals. In addition to describing possible routes, these surveys also reported on the geology, zoology, botany, paleontology of the land as well as provided ethnographic descriptions of the Native peoples encountered during the surveys. Despite the over 12 volumes of data produced there was almost no detailed topographic maps produced over competing routes that would be needed to estimate the feasibility, cost and best route to build a "real" railroad. One by-product of these surveys was the purchase of the Gadsden Purchase of the southern parts of the future states of Arizona and New Mexico for $10,000,000 as it was realized the best southern route lie south of the Gila River boundary in a mostly vacant Mexican territoryâ€"fortunately Santa Anna, President of Mexico again, needed money to pay for his army and was happy to sell some "desert". The U.S. Congress was strongly divided on where the eastern terminus of the railroad should beâ€"in a southern or northern city. The Southern Pacific Railroad (later merged with the Central Pacific Railroad) would start construction after the U.S. Civil War was concluded and finish a southern transcontinental route across the U.S. in 1880.

Political authorization and funding

Meanwhile, after years of study, argument, and lobbying by Theodore Judah and others as to where the "eastern" terminus would be and how construction would be funded, the construction and operation of a transcontinental railroad line was authorized by the Pacific Railroad Acts of 1862 and the even more generous act of 1864, during the American Civil War when southern Democratic opposition in the Congress to the central route near the 42nd parallel was absent. Other railroads were also authorized under much the same terms. The Union Pacific Company was incorporated by act of Congress on July 1, 1862, under the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862, which provided for the construction of railroads from the Missouri River to the Pacific.

On June 21, 1861, the "Central Pacific Rail Road of California" was incorporated in California. On October 8, 1864, its name was changed to "Central Pacific Railroad of California" after the 1864 Pacific Railway Act amendment passed that summer. The two newly incorporated railroad companies, the Union Pacific Railroad and Central Pacific Railroad, were chosen by Congress to build and operate the first transcontinental railroad (aka the "Pacific Railroad") from the Missouri River at Council Bluffs, Iowa, to Sacramento, California and on to the San Francisco Bay aided by 30-year U.S. government bonds (at 6% interest). Congress, in the middle of a war, set up an ambiguous Union Pacific corporate structure that provided only "spotty" oversight and ambiguous corporate leadershipâ€"it was often unclear who was in charge. These ambiguities allowed the Union Pacific Company to be manipulated by some for extra profits as it was being built. The government backed bonds were to be issued at $16,000/mile for track laid at level grade, $32,000/mile for track laid in foothills and $48,000/mile for track laid in mountains. The two railroad companies sold similar amounts of company-backed bonds and stock.

In addition to government bonds, a 400-foot (120 m) right-of-way corridor (along with additional lands needed for all sidings, stations, rail yards, maintenance stations,) etc. on which to build the railroad were made by the Congress. Extensive land grants of alternate sections (one section is one square mile) of government-owned lands along the tracks for 10 miles (16 km) on both sides of the track â€" 6,400 acres (2,600 ha) per mile (1.6 km) of track â€" were also granted to be used and/or sold by the companies. Grants were not allowed or given in cities or at rivers or on non-government property. While some of this land had potentially exploitable minerals, was good farm or forest land, and quite valuable, much of it was essentially valueless desert. Provisions in the Pacific Railroad Acts were made for the telegraph companies, who had just completed the First Transcontinental Telegraph in 1861, to combine their lines with the Railroad's telegraph lines as they were built. Railroad-allocated land not sold in three years was to be sold at the prevailing government price for homesteads: $1.25 per 1 acre (0.40 ha) if there were any buyers. Had the bonds not been repaid (which they were with interest), the Acts provided that all remaining railroad property, including trains and tracks, were to revert to the U.S. government for disposal.

The massive amount of capital investment (over $100,000,000 in 1860 dollars) needed to build the railroad was obtained by selling government guaranteed bonds (granted per mile of completed track) and railroad company bonds and stock to interested private investors. The land grants, financial incentives and bonds would hopefully cover most of the massive initial capital investment needed to build the railroad. The bonds would be paid back by the sale of government granted land and prospective passenger and freight income. It was far from a given that the railroads to the thinly settled west would make enough money to repay for their construction and operation for a long time. In addition to the railroad land grants which the railroads sold at low cost to help pay back their government backed bonds (all were repaid) the 37th United States Congress (1861-1863) passed the Homestead Acts which were several United States federal laws that sold an applicant 160 acres (65 ha) of unclaimed government owned land, typically called a "homestead", at low cost when the applicant did some prescribed work on it. There was now a strong and relatively low cost incentive for the settlement of the west which many thousands took advantage of. The railroads started new population growth and potential population growth induced many other railroads to be built and connected to the transcontinental railroad to serve communities and states off the original main track.

Most of the engineers and surveyors who figured out how and where to build the railroad on the Union Pacific were usually engineering college and/or United States Military Academy trained Union Army veterans who had learned their railroad trade keeping the trains running and tracks maintained during the U.S. Civil War working for the U.S. Military Railroad (USMRR) which was established by the United States War Department as a separate agency to operate and repair any rail lines needed by the Union army or seized by the government from the Confederate States of America railroads during the American Civil Warâ€"they controlled over 2,000 miles (3,200 km) by the end of the war. Extensive experience building truss bridges was acquired as many bridges had to be built or rebuilt during the war. Kits and techniques for rapidly building new bridges or repairing old bridges were developed by the remarkable United States Military Academy trained engineer Herman Haupt who headed the U.S. Military Railroad during the Civil war. Nearly all of the Union and Confederate armies were supported and transported by extensive rail networks which had to be built up, expanded, protected and repaired as the armies advanced and retreated. Most key workers and supervisors were trained by previous on-the-job training and knew what needed to be done and how to direct workers to get it done. Most of the semi-skilled workers on the Union Pacific were recruited from the many discharged Union Army and Confederate Army veterans and emigrant Irishmen escaping poverty and famine in Ireland.

After 1864, the Central Pacific Railroad had the same Federal financial incentives as the Union Pacific Railroad as well as some construction bonds that were earlier granted by the state of California and the city of San Francisco. The Central Pacific hired engineers and surveyors who had extensive experience and training building railroads and knew what needed to be done and how to supervise others to get it doneâ€"some were Canadian and British trained. The Central Pacific, facing a semi-skilled labor shortage, relied on some black employees escaping the slavery and turmoil of the American Civil War and many emigrant Chinese manual laborers for construction. Most of these Chinese emigrants were escaping the poverty and terrors of the Taiping Revolution in the Kwangtung province in China. Supervisory, engineering and skilled jobs were done with experienced "white" workers including a lot of Irishmen. The Chinese, despite their small stature and total lack of experience with railroad work, handled most of the heavy manual labor needed to get over and through the rugged Sierra Nevada mountains and across the Nevada and Utah deserts. In that time period there was only a very limited amount of work that could be done by animals, simple machines or black powder. Most of the black and white workers were paid $30.00/month and provided food and lodging. Higher skilled and supervisory jobs paid more. Most Chinese were initially paid $31.00/month and provided lodging. They bought and cooked their own foodâ€"just as they desired. In 1867 this was raised to $35.00/month after a strike.

The Central Pacific RR broke ground on January 8, 1863. Essentially all of their manufactured railway supplies: picks, shovels, axes, hammers, saws, sledge hammers, spikes (about 5,500/mile), rock drills, black powder, bridge hardware, iron rails (about 350 rails/mile of 30 foot rails; 200,000 pounds/mile), fishplates (700/mile if using 30 foot rails), bolts and nuts to bolt the fishplates on, wrenches, railroad switches for the many railroad sidings needed on a one way track, railroad turntables, steam locomotives, railroad freight cars, railroad passenger cars, telegraph wire, insulators, batteries, telegraph keys, etc. would have to be imported from manufacturers on the East Coast of the United States. These goods would have to travel by trains to the east coast ports and loaded on board ships which then went on about 18,000 miles (29,000 km) and about 200 day (by regular sailing ship) trip or about 120 day trip (by Clipper ship) around South America's Cape Horn or the much more expensive route across the new paddle steamer and Panama Railroad's crossing of the Isthmus of Panamaâ€"about a 40-day trip and twice as expensive per pound of merchandise. Most passenger traffic went via the much faster Panama route. After the goods got to the San Francisco Bay area they would have to be unloaded from the ships and put on river paddle steamers for transport over the final 130 miles (210 km) trip up the Sacramento River to the new state capital of Sacramento, California. The first CPRR track was laid in August 1863 when rail shipments finally reached Sacramento. Many of these steam engines, railroad cars, etc. were shipped dismantled and had to be reassembled in the Sacramento Central Pacific maintenance yards. Ties (about 2,500/mile), construction lumber, telegraph poles, trestle and bridge timbers, and firewood to feed the CPRR locomotives could be sawed and/or chopped from timber already in California, Oregon, etc. and transported by ship, wagon and rail to where needed.

The Union Pacific Railroad (UPRR) did not start construction until July 1865, due to the difficulty getting organized and obtaining financial backing and the Civil War's need for workers, rails, ties, steam locomotives and railroad supplies. In addition a railroad connection to Council Bluffs, Iowa and the new city of Omaha, Nebraska had not yet been completed which made getting equipment needed to start work very difficult. Nearly all equipment and railroad supplies would have to be initially be delivered to Omaha and Council Bluffs by paddle steamer up the Missouri River during the summer until rail connections to the east could be finished. The U.S. Civil War ended 22 June 1865. In the first year, 1865, so little work was done by Union Pacific that they sold two of the four steam locomotives they had purchased.

After the Civil War, competition for railroad supplies to build a new transcontinental railroad while building or rebuilding new railroad nets and repairing and bringing up to date the damaged rail networks in the south initially caused railroad supplies prices to rise. Completion of the railroad and the new Homesteading laws substantially accelerated populating the West. Land could now be obtained fairly cheaply and there was now a much cheaper and faster way to get "goods" to buy and sell, and widespread markets for those goods regardless of where you lived. The railroads established the equivalent of inland "ports". They established the modern state's land highways of commerce and trade, resulting in the decline of territory "controlled" by the Indian tribes in these regions.

The gauge, the distance between the wheels, of both railroads was set at what is now called standard gaugeâ€"4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1.435 m). The railroad gauge used in the United States were not all standardized at this time with several different gauges being used. This made transferring railway cars and locomotives to different railways difficult. The gauge of the southern and Panama Railroads were 5 feet (1.5 m) then. The rails used were nearly all iron rails of a flat bottomed modified I-beam profile weighing 56 pounds (25 kg) per 1 yard (0.91 m) or 66 pounds (30 kg) per 1 yard (0.91 m). The heavier rails were used in the Sierras where they made it easier to plow the tracks for snow clearance. Railroad rails were restricted to U.S. manufacturers by congressional fiat. Today's engines and railroad cars are much heavier and use much heftier and stronger steel rails, often continuously welded. By 1865, steel rails had only just been introduced, as the Bessemer process and open hearth furnace steel making processes started to be established in the United States. From these came steel rails which, at slightly higher prices, lasted much longer than iron rails. They were not used in building the first transcontinental railroad though which was built as rapidly as possible at as low an initial cost as possible. The advantages of steel rails had as yet not been demonstrated. Upgrades would have to be made in railroad equipment, tracks, ties, bridges, etc. as the railroad became profitable or wore out. Within a few years, nearly all railroads converted to steel rails. Not only one of the major initial costs of building a railroad, rails also get a surprising amount of wear and have to be replaced sooner if made of iron, particularly in corners. The iron rail lengths used in building the Transcontinental Railroad are variously listed as 30 feet (9.1 m) (560 pounds (250 kg)) or 15 feet (4.6 m) long (280 pounds (130 kg)). The available pictures seem to favor the shorter length; but the longer rails may have been used if available, especially on curves where their longer length made them easier to bend (using crow bars).

Time was not standardized in the U.S. then, but set by each railroad to minimize errors in scheduling its own trains. Only later (about 1883) were standardized time zones set up and time standardized so all the railroads could schedule their trainsâ€"later recognized by Congress. Needing rapid communication for ordering more supplies or particular types of workers with specific skills, and needing to schedule the trains which had to go both ways on a single track, the companies built telegraph lines along the railroad rights of way as the track was laid. The close proximity of the railroad made these lines easier to protect, easier to supply with operators for relay or train stations, and easier to maintain than the original First Transcontinental Telegraph lines, which went over much of the original routes of the Mormon Trail up the North Platte River and across the very thinly populated Central Nevada Route through the central Utah and Nevada Big Basin "deserts". The railroad's telegraph lines, which followed the railroad and were needed to schedule train traffic to avoid conflicts and collisions, soon superseded the earlier telegraph lines in general use. Many of the original telegraph lines were abandoned by the original telegraph companies as they merged their telegraph business with the railroad telegraph linesâ€"just as specified by Congress.

For maps and railroad pictures of this era shortly after the advent of photography see:

An 1879 tourist guide to railroad travel gives insights to travel in the late 1880s on the transcontinental railroadâ€"see the eBook: "The Pacific Tourist"

The 100,000 square feet (9,300 m²) California State Railroad Museum at old town Sacramento, California has an extensive bookstore of railroad reading material and a lot of the original and later Union Pacific and Central Pacific locomotives, cars, etc.

Transcontinental Route

Union Pacific Route

The Union Pacific's 1,087 miles (1,749 km) of track started at MP 0.0 in Council Bluffs, Iowa on the eastern side of the Missouri River. This was chosen by the President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, as the location of its Transfer Depot where up to seven railroads could transfer mail and other goods to Union Pacific trains bound for the west. Initially trains crossed the river by ferry to get to the western tracks starting in Omaha, Nebraska in the newly formed Nebraska Territory. Winter and spring caused severe problems as the Missouri River froze over in the winter; but not well enough to support a railroad track plus train. The train ferries had to be replaced by sleighs each winter. Getting freight across a river that flooded every spring and filled with floating debris and/or ice floes became very problematic for several months of the year. Starting in 1873, the railroad traffic crossed the river over the new 2,750 feet (840 m) long, eleven span, truss Union Pacific Missouri River Bridge to Omaha, Nebraska.

After the rail line's initial climb through the Missouri River bluffs west of Omaha and out of the Missouri River Valley, the route bridged the Elkhorn River and then crossed over the new 1,500 feet (460 m) Loup River bridge as it followed the north side of the Platte River valley west through Nebraska along the general path of the Oregon, Mormon and California Trails.

By December 1865, the Union Pacific had only completed 40 miles (64 km) of track, reaching Fremont, Nebraska, and some further 10 miles (16 km) of roadbed. At the end of 1865, Peter A. Dey, Chief Engineer of the Union Pacific, resigned over a routing dispute with Thomas C. Durant, one of the chief financiers of the Union Pacific.

During the winter of 1865â€"66, former Union General John S. Casement, General "Jack", the new Chief Engineer of the Union Pacific, had several railroad cars equipped as portable bunkhouses for his men, and gathered men and supplies to push the railroad rapidly west. His bunkhouses included a galley car to prepare meals, and even provided for a herd of cows to be moved with the rail head and bunk cars to provide a movable source of fresh meat. Some "meat" hunters were hired to provide buffalo meat from the large herds of American bison then roaming in the Nebraska Territory. The small survey parties used to locate where the track went were subject to Indian raids which occasionally wiped them out. To protect these small surveying and hunting parties, the U.S. Army instituted active cavalry patrols that grew larger as the Indians grew more aggressive. Temporary, "hell-on-wheels" towns, made mostly of canvas tents, accompanied the railroad as construction headed west. Most faded away but some became permanent settlements.

The Platte River was too shallow and meandering to provide river transport, but the Platte river valley headed west and sloped up gradually at about 6 feet (1.8 m) per 1 mile (1.6 km), often allowing to lay a mile (1.6 km) of track a day or more in 1866 as the Union Pacific finally started moving rapidly west. Building bridges to cross creeks and rivers was the main source of delays. Near where the Platte River splits into the North Platte River and South Platte River, the railroad bridged the North Platte River over a 2,600 feet (790 m) long bridge (nicknamed 1/2 mile bridge). It was built across the shallow but wide North Platte resting on piles driven by steam pile drivers. Here they built the "railroad" town of North Platte, Nebraska in December 1866 after completing about 240 miles (390 km) of track that year. In late 1866, former Major General Grenville M. Dodge was appointed Chief Engineer on the Union Pacific, but hard working General "Jack" Casement continued to work as chief construction "boss" and his brother Daniel Casement continued as financial officer.

The original emigrant route across Wyoming of the Oregon, Mormon and California Trails, after progressing up the Platte River valley, went up the North Platte River valley through Casper, Wyoming, along the Sweetwater River and over the Continental Divide at 7,412 feet (2,259 m) South Pass. The original westward travellers in their ox and mule pulled wagons tried to stick to river valleys to avoid as much road building as possibleâ€"gradients and sharp corners were usually of little or no concern to them. The ox and mule pulled wagons were the original off-road vehicles in their day, since nearly all of the Emigrant Trails went cross country over rough, un-improved trails. The route over South Pass's main advantage for wagons pulled by oxen or mules was a shorter elevation over an "easy" pass to cross and its "easy" connection to nearby river valleys on both sides of the continental divide for water and grass. The emigrant trails were closed in winter. The North Platte/South Pass route was far less beneficial for a railroad, as it was about 150 miles (240 km) longer and much more expensive to construct up the narrow, steep and rocky canyons of the North Platte. The route along the North Platte was also further from Denver, Colorado, and went across difficult terrain, while a railroad connection to that City was already being planned for and surveyed.

Efforts to survey a new, shorter, "better" route had been under way since 1864. By 1867, a new route was found and surveyed that went along part of the South Platte River in western Nebraska and after entering what is now the state of Wyoming, ascended a gradual sloping ridge between Lodgepole Creek and Crow Creek to 8,200 feet (2,500 m) Evans pass (also called Sherman's Pass) which was discovered by the Union Pacific employed English surveyor and engineer, James Evans, in about 1864. This pass now is marked by the Ames Monument (41.131281,-105.398045 lat., long.) marking its significance and commemorating two of the main backers of the Union Pacific Railroad. From North Platte, Nebraska (elevation 2,834 feet (864 m)), the railroad proceeded westward and upward along a new path across the Nebraska Territory and Wyoming Territory (then part of the Dakota Territory) along the north bank of the South Platte River and into what would become the state of Wyoming at Lone Pine, Wyoming. Evan's Pass was located between what would become the new "railroad" towns of Cheyenne, Wyoming and Laramie, Wyoming. Connecting to this pass, about 15 miles (24 km) west of Cheyenne, was the one place across the Laramie Mountains that had a narrow "guitar neck" of land that crossed the mountains without serious erosion at the so-called "gangplank" (41.099746,-105.153205 lat., long.) discovered by Major General Grenville Dodge in 1865 when he was in the U.S. Army. The new route surveyed across Wyoming was over 150 miles (240 km) shorter, had a flatter profile, allowed for cheaper and easier railroad construction, and also went closer by Denver and the known coalfields in the Wasatch and Laramie Ranges.

The railroad gained about 3,200 feet (980 m) in the 220 miles (350 km) climb to Cheyenne from North Platte, Nebraskaâ€"about 15 feet (4.6 m) per mile (1.6 km)--a very gentle slope of less than one degree average. This "new" route had never become an emigrant route because it lacked the water and grass to feed the emigrants' oxen and mules. Steam locomotives did not need grass, and the railroad companies could drill wells for water if necessary.

Coal had been discovered in Wyoming and reported on by John C. Frémont in his 1843 expedition across Wyoming, and was already being exploited by Utah residents from towns like Coalville, Utah and later Kemmerer, Wyoming by the time the Transcontinental railroad was built. Union Pacific needed coal to fuel its steam locomotives on the almost treeless plains across Nebraska and Wyoming. Coal shipments by rail were also looked on as a potentially major source of incomeâ€"this potential is still being realized.

The Union Pacific reached the new railroad town of Cheyenne in December 1867, having laid about 270 miles (430 km) that year. They paused over the winter, preparing to push the track over Evan's (Sherman's) pass. At 8,247 feet (2,514 m), Evans/Sherman's pass is the highest point reached on the transcontinental railroad. About 4 miles (6.4 km) beyond Evans/Sherman's pass, the railroad had to build an extensive bridge over the Dale Creek canyon (41.103803, -105.454797, lat., long.). The Dale Creek Crossing was one of their more difficult railroad engineering challenges. Dale Creek Bridge was 650-foot (200 m) long and 125 feet (38 m) above Dale Creek. The bridge components were pre-built of timber in Chicago, Illinois and then shipped on rail cars to Dale Creek for assembly. The eastern and western approaches to the bridge site, near the highest elevation on the transcontinental railroad, required cutting through granite for nearly a mile on each side. The initial Dale Creek bridge had a train speed limit of 4 miles (6.4 km) per hour across the bridge. Beyond Dale Creek, railroad construction paused at what became the town of Laramie, Wyoming to build a bridge across the Laramie River.

Located 35 miles (56 km) from Evans pass, Union Pacific connected the new "railroad" town of Cheyenne to Denver and its Denver Pacific Railway and Telegraph Company railroad line in 1870. Elevated 6,070 feet (1,850 m) above sea level, and sitting on the new Union Pacific route with a connection to Denver, Cheyenne was chosen to become a major railroad center and was equipped with extensive railroad yards, maintenance facilities and a Union Pacific presence. Its location made it a good base for helper locomotives to couple to trains with snowplows to help clear the tracks of winter snow or help haul heavy freight over Evan's pass. The Union Pacific's junction with the Denver Railroad with its connection to Kansas City, Kansas, Kansas City, Missouri and the railroads east of the Missouri River again increased Cheyenne's importance as the junction of two major railroads. Cheyenne later became Wyoming's largest city and the capital of the new state of Wyoming.

The railroad established many townships along the way: Fremont, Elkhorn, Grand Island, North Platte, Ogallala, Sidney, Nebraska as the railroad followed the Platte River across Nebraska territory. The railroad even dipped into what would become the new state of Colorado after crossing the North Platte River as it followed the South Platte River west into what would become Julesburg, Colorado before turning northwest along Lodgepole Creek into Wyoming. In the Dakota Territory (Wyoming) the new towns of Cheyenne, Laramie, Rawlins (named for Union General John Aaron Rawlins, who camped in the locality in 1867.), Green River and Evanston, Wyoming (named after James Evans) were established, as well as many more fuel and water stops. The Green River was crossed with a new bridge, and the new "railroad" town of Green River constructed there after the tracks reached the Green River on October 1, 1868â€"the last big river to cross.

On December 4, 1868 the Union Pacific reached Evanston, having laid almost 360 miles (580 km) of track over the Green River and the Laramie Plains that year. By 1871, Evanston became a significant train maintenance shop town equipped to carry out extensive repairs on the cars and steam locomotives.

In the Utah Territory, the railroad once again diverted from the main emigrant trails to cross the Wasatch Mountains and went down the rugged Echo Canyon (Summit County, Utah) and Weber River canyon. To speed up construction as much as possible, Union Pacific contracted several thousand Mormon workers to cut, fill, trestle, bridge, blast and tunnel its way down the rugged Weber River Canyon to Ogden, Utah ahead of the railroad construction. The Mormon and Union Pacific rail work was joined in the area of the present-day border between Utah and Wyoming. The longest of four tunnels built in Weber Canyon was 757 feet (231 m) long Tunnel 2. Work on this tunnel started in October 1868 and was completed six months later. Temporary tracks were laid around it and Tunnels 3 (508 feet (155 m)), 4 (297 feet (91 m)) and 5 (579 feet (176 m)) to continue work on the tracks west of the tunnels.

The tunnels were all made with the new dangerous nitroglycerine explosive which expedited work but caused some fatal accidents. While building the railroad along the rugged Weber River Canyon, Mormon workers signed the Thousand Mile Tree which was lone tree alongside the track a 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from Omaha. A historic marker has been placed there.

The tracks reached Ogden, Utah on March 27, 1869, although finishing work would continue on the tracks, tunnels and bridges in Weber Canyon for over a year. From Ogden, the railroad went north of the Great Salt Lake to Brigham City and Corinne, Utah using Mormon workers, before finally connecting with the Central Pacific Railroad at Promontory Summit in Utah territory on May 10, 1869. Some Union Pacific officers declined to pay the Mormons all of the agreed upon construction costs of the work through Weber Canyon, and beyond, claiming Union Pacific poverty despite the millions they had extracted through Credit Mobilier shenanigans. Only partial payment was secured through court actions against Union Pacific. Fortunately, the Union Pacific railroad land grants in Utah were mostly worthless territory through mountains and deserts so they did not gain too much extra. The portion of the original railroad around the north shore of the Great Salt Lake is no longer used. In 1904, the Lucin Cutoff, a causeway across the center of the Great Salt Lake to Promontory Point, bypassed Promontory Summit. The cutoff shortened the rail route by approximately 43 miles (69 km).

Central Pacific Route

The Central Pacific laid 690 miles (1,110 km) of track, starting in Sacramento, California in 1863 and continuing over the rugged 7,000-foot (2,100 m) Sierra Nevada mountains at Donner Pass into the new state of Nevada. The elevation change from Sacramento (elev. 40 ft or 12 m) to Donner summit (elev. 7,000 ft or 2,100 m) had to be accomplished in about 90 miles (140 km) with an average elevation change of 76 feet per mile (14 meters per km), and there were only a few places in the Sierras where this type of "ramp" existed. The discovery and detailed map survey with profiles and elevations of this route over the Sierra Nevada (U.S.) is credited to Theodore Judah, chief engineer of the Central Pacific Railroad up till his death in 1863. This route is up a ridge between the North fork of the American River on the south and Bear River (Feather River) and South Yuba River on the north. As the railroad climbed out of Sacramento up to Donner summit, there was only one 3-mile (4.8 km) section near "Cape Horn CPRR" where the railroad grade slightly exceeded two degrees.

In June 1864, the Central Pacific railroad entrepreneurs opened Dutch Flat and Donner Lake Wagon Road (DFDLWR). Costing about $300,000 and a years worth of work, this toll road wagon route was opened over much of the route the Central Pacific railroad (CPRR) would use over Donner Summit to carry freight and passengers needed by the CPRR and to carry other cargo over their toll road to and from the ever advancing rail head and over the Sierras to the gold and silver mining towns of Nevada. As the railroad advanced, their freight rates with the combined rail and wagon shipments would become much more competitive. The volume of the toll road freight traffic to Nevada was estimated to be about $13,000,000 a year as the Comstock Lode boomed, and getting even part of this freight traffic would help pay for the railroad construction. When the railroad reached Reno, it had the majority of all Nevada freight shipments, and the price of goods in Nevada dropped significantly as the freight charges to Nevada dropped significantly. The rail route over the Sierras followed the general route of the Truckee branch of the California Trail, going east over Donner Pass and down the rugged Truckee River valley.

The route over the Sierras had been plotted out by Judah in preliminary surveys before his death in 1863. Judah's deputy, Samuel S. Montague was appointed as Central Pacific's new Chief Engineer, with Lewis M. Clement as Assistant Chief Engineer and Charles Cadwalader as second assistant. To build the new railroad, detailed surveys had to be run that showed where the cuts, fills, trestles, bridges and tunnels would have to be built. Work that was identified as taking a long time was started as soon as its projected track location could be ascertained and work crews, supplies and road work equipment found to be sent ahead. Tunnels, trestles and bridges were nearly all built this way. The spread-out nature of the work resulted in the work being split into two divisions, with L.M. Clement taking the upper division from Blue Cañon to Truckee and Cadwalader taking the lower division from Truckee to the Nevada border. Other assistant engineers were assigned to specific tasks such as building a bridge, tunnel or trestle which was done by the workers under experienced supervisors.

In total, the Central Pacific had eleven tunnel projects (Nos. 3 through 13) under construction in the Sierra from 1865â€"68, with seven tunnels located in a 2-mile (3.2 km) stretch on the east side of Donner Summit. The tunnels were usually built by drilling a series of holes in the tunnel face, filling them with black powder and detonating it to break the rock free. The black powder was provided by the California Powder Works near Santa Cruz, California. These works had started production in 1864 after the U.S. Civil War had cut off shipments of black powder from the East to the mining and railroad industry of California and Nevada. The Central Pacific was a prolific user of black powder, often using up to 500 kegs of 25 pounds (11 kg) each per day.

The summit tunnel (Number 6), 1,660 feet (510 m), was started in late 1865, well ahead of the rail head. Through solid granite, the summit tunnel progressed at a rate of only about 0.98 feet (0.30 m) per day per face as it was being worked by three eight-hour shifts of workers, hand drilling holes with a rock drill and hammer, filling them with black powder and trying to blast the granite loose. One crew worked drilling holes on the faces and another crew collected and removed the loosened rock after each explosion. The workers were pulled off the summit tunnel and the track grading east of Donner pass in the winter of 1865/66 as there was no way to supply them, nor winter quarters they could have lived in. The crews were transferred to work on bridges and track grading on the Truckee River canyon.

In 1866 they put in a 125-foot (38 m) vertical shaft in the center of the summit tunnel and started work towards the east and west tunnel faces, giving four working faces on the summit tunnel to speed up progress. A steam engine off an old locomotive was brought up with much effort over the wagon road and used as a winch driver to help remove loosened rock from the vertical shaft and two working faces. By the winter of 1866/67, work had progressed sufficiently and a winter camp had been built for workers on the summit tunnel which allowed to continue during the winter. The cross section of a tunnel face was a 16-foot-wide (4.9 m), 16-foot-high (4.9 m) oval with an 11-foot (3.4 m) vertical wall. Progress on the tunnel sped up to over 1.5 feet (0.46 m) per day per face when they started using the newly discovered nitroglycerinâ€"manufactured near the tunnel. They used nitroglycerin to deepen the summit tunnel to the required 16-foot (4.9 m) height after the four tunnel faces met, and made even faster progress. Nearly all other tunnels were worked on both tunnel faces and met in the middle. Depending on the material the tunnels penetrated, they were left unlined or lined with brick, rock walls or timber and post. Some tunnels were designed to bend in the middle to align with the track bed curvature. Despite this potential complication, nearly all the different tunnel center lines met within 2 inches (5.1 cm) or so. The detailed survey work that made these tunnel digs as precise as required were nearly all done by the Canadian born and trained Lewis Clement, the CPRR's Chief Assistant Engineer and Superintendent of Track, and his assistants.

Hills or ridges in front of the railroad road bed would have to have a flat-bottomed, V shaped "cut" made to get the railroad through the ridge or hill. The type of material determined the slope of the V and how much material would have to be removed. Ideally, these cuts would be matched with valley fills that could use the dug out material to bring the road bed up to grade--cut and fill construction. In the 1860s there was no heavy equipment that could be used to make these cuts or haul it away to make the fills. The options were to dig it out by pick and shovel, haul the hillside material by wheelbarrow and/or horse or mule cart or blast it loose. To blast a V shaped cut out, they had to drill several holes up to 20 feet (6.1 m) deep in the material, fill them with black powder, and blast the material away. Since the Central Pacific was in a hurry, they were profligate users of black powder to blast their way though the hills. The only disadvantage came when a nearby valley needed fill to get across it. The explosive technique often blew most of the potential fill material down the hillside, making it unavailable for fill. Initially, many valleys were bridged by "temporary" trestles that could be rapidly built and were later replaced by much lower maintenance and permanent solid fill. The existing railroad made transporting and putting material in valleys much easierâ€"load it on railway dump cars, haul where needed and dump it over the side of the trestle.

The route down the eastern Sierras was done on the south side of Donner Lake with a series of switchbacks carved into the mountain. The Truckee River, which drains Lake Tahoe, had already found and scoured out the best route across the Carson Range of mountains east of the Sierras. The route down the rugged Truckee River Canyon, including required bridges, was done ahead of the main summit tunnel completion. To expedite the building of the railroad through the Truckee River canyon, the Central Pacific somehow hauled two small locomotives, railcars, rails and other material on wagons and sleighs to what is now Truckee, California and worked the winter of 1867/68 on their way down Truckee canyon ahead of the tracks being completed to Truckee. In Truckee canyon, five Howe truss bridges had to be built. This gave them a head start on getting to the "easy" miles across Nevada.

In order to keep the higher portions of the Sierra grade open in the winter, some 37 miles (60 km) of timber snow sheds were built between Blue Cañon and Truckee in addition to utilizing snowplows pushed by locomotives, as well as manual shovelling. With the advent of more efficient oil fired steam and later diesel electric power to drive plows, flangers, spreaders, and rotary snow plows, most of the wooden snowsheds have long since been removed as obsolete. Tunnels 1-5 and 13 of the original 1860s tunnels on Track 1 of the Sierra grade remain in use today, while additional new tunnels were later driven when the grade was double tracked over the first quarter of the twentieth century. In 1993, the Southern Pacific Railroad (which operated the CPRR-built Oakland-Ogden line until its 1996 merger with the UP) closed and pulled up the 6.7-mile (10.8 km) section of Track #1 over the summit running between the Norden complex (Shed 26, MP 192.1) and the covered crossovers in Shed #47 (MP 198.8) about a mile east of the old flyover at Eder, bypassing and abandoning the tunnel 6-8 complex, the concrete snowsheds just beyond them, and tunnels 9-12 ending at MP 195.7, all of which had been located on Track 1 within two miles of the summit. Since then all east- and westbound traffic has been run over the Track #2 grade crossing the summit about one mile (1.6 km) south of Donner Pass through the 10,322-foot-long (3,146 m) Tunnel #41 (aka "The Big Hole") running under Mt. Judah between Soda Springs and Eder, which was opened in 1925 when the summit section of the grade was double tracked. This routing change was made because the Track 2 and Tunnel 41 Summit crossing is far easier and less expensive to maintain and keep open in the harsh Sierra winters.

On June 18, 1868, the Central Pacific reached Reno, Nevada after completing 132 miles (212 km) of railroad up and over the Sierras from Sacramento, California. By then the railroad had already been prebuilt down the Truckee River on the much flatter land from Reno to Wadsworth, Nevada where they bridged the Truckee for the last time. From there, they struggled across a forty mile desert to the end of the Humboldt river at the Humboldt Sink. From the end of the Humboldt, they continued east over the Great Basin desert bordering the Humboldt River to Wells, Nevada. One of the most troublesome problems found on this route along the Humboldt was at Palisade Canyon (near Carlin, Nevada), where for some 12 miles (19 km) the line had to be built between the river and basalt cliffs. From Wells, Nevada to Promontory Summit, the Railroad left the Humboldt and proceeded across the Nevada and Utah desert. Water for the steam locomotives was provided by wells, springs, or pipelines to nearby water sources. Water was often pumped into the water tanks with windmills. Train fuel and water spots on the early trains with steam locomotives may have been as often as every 10 miles (16 km). On one memorable occasion, not far from Promontory, the Central Pacific crews organized an army of workers and five train loads of construction material, and laid 10 miles (16 km) of track on a prepared rail bed in one dayâ€"-a record that still stands today. The Central Pacific and Union Pacific raced to get as much track laid as possible, and the Central Pacific laid about 560 miles (900 km) of track from Reno to Promontory Summit in the one year before the Last Spike was driven on May 10, 1869.

Central Pacific had 1,694 freight cars available by May 1869, with more under construction in their Sacramento yard. Major repairs and maintenance on the Central Pacific rolling stock was done in their Sacramento maintenance yard. Near the end of 1869, Central Pacific had 162 locomotives, of which 2 had two drivers (drive wheels), 110 had four drivers, and 50 had six drivers. The steam locomotives had been purchased in the eastern states and shipped to California by sea. Thirty-six additional locomotives were built and coming west, and twenty-eight more were under construction. There was a shortage of passenger cars and more had to be ordered. The first Central Pacific sleeper, the "Silver Palace Sleeping Car", arrived at Sacramento on June 8, 1868.

The CPRR route passed through Newcastle, California and Truckee, California, Reno, Nevada, Wadsworth, Winnemucca, Battle Mountain, Elko, and Wells, Nevada, (with many more fuel and water stops) before connecting with the Union Pacific line at Promontory Summit in the Utah Territory. When the eastern end of the CPRR was extended to Ogden by purchasing the Union Pacific Railroad line from Promontory for about $2.8 million in 1870, it ended the short period of a boom town for Promontory, extended the Central Pacific tracks about 60 miles (97 km) and made Ogden a major terminus on the transcontinental railroad, as passengers and freight switched railroads there.

Later, the western part of the route was extended from Sacramento to the Alameda Terminal in Alameda, California, and shortly thereafter, to the Oakland Long Wharf at Oakland Point in Oakland, California and on to San Jose, California. Train ferries transferred some railroad cars to and from the Oakland wharves and tracks to wharves and tracks in San Francisco. Before the CPRR was completed, developers were building other feeder railroads like the Virginia and Truckee Railroad to the Comstock Lode diggings in Virginia City, Nevada and several different extensions in California and Nevada to reach other cities there. Some of their main cargo was the thousands of cords of firewood needed for the many steam engines and pumps, cooking stoves, heating stoves etc. in Comstock Lode towns and the tons of ice needed by the miners as they worked ever deeper into the "hot" Comstock Lode ore body. In the mines, temperatures could get above 120 °F (49 °C) at the work face and a miner often used over 100 pounds (45 kg) of ice per shift. This new railroad connected to the Central Pacific near Reno, Nevada and went through Carson City, Nevada, the new capitol of Nevada.

After the transcontinental railroads were completed, many other railroads were built to connect up to other population centers in Utah, Wyoming, Kansas, Colorado, Oregon, Washington territories, etc. In 1869, the Kansas Pacific Railway started building the Hannibal Bridge, a swing bridge across the Missouri River between Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas which connected railroads on both sides of the Missouri while still allowing passage of paddle steamers on the river. After completion, this became another major east-west railroad. To speed completion of the Kansas Pacific Railroad to Denver, construction started east from Denver in March 1870 to meet the railroad coming west from Kansas city. The two crews met at a point called Comanche Crossing, Kansas Territory, on August 15, 1870. Denver was now firmly on track to becoming the largest city and the future capitol of Colorado. The Kansas Pacific Railroad linked with the Denver Pacific Railway via Denver to Cheyenne in 1870.

The original transcontinental railroad route did not pass through the two biggest cities in the so-called Great American Desertâ€"Denver, Colorado, and Salt Lake City, Utah. Feeder railroad lines were soon built to service these two and other cities and states along the route.

Modern-day Interstate 80 closely follows the path of the railroad from Sacramento across modern day California, Nevada, Wyoming and Nebraska, with two major exceptions: Interstate-80 crosses Donner Summit and proceeds east down the north side of Donner Lake while the railroad goes down the south side; and east of Wells, Nevada, Interstate 80 passes through Wendover, Utah and then goes across the salt flats on the south shore of the Great Salt Lake on its way to Salt Lake City, while the original railroad went on the north side and now goes across the Great Salt Lake. The Interstate then passes up Parley's Canyon before rejoining the railroad near the Echo Canyon junction of Interstate 84 and Interstate 80.

I-84, built much later, simply "blasted" its way down Weber Canyon with no tunnels. The interstate diverges somewhat from the railroad route in rugged terrain as it was built much later, with much more powerful equipment, better explosives and at much higher cost. In addition, interstate highways can be built up to about six degrees of grade which allows them to go many places the railroads had to go around, since their goal was to hold their grades to less than two degrees.

History of Transcontinental Railroad

The Pacific Railroad constituted one of the most significant and ambitious American technological feats of the 19th century, following in the footsteps of the Erie Canal (and many other canals) in the 1820s, the building of extensive railroad networks in the eastern, southern and midwest parts of the U.S starting in the 1830s and the crossing of the Isthmus of Panama by the Panama Railroad in 1851-1855. The transcontinental line served as North America's vital link for trade, commerce and travel that joined the eastern and western halves of the late 19th-century United States. It brought the states of Nevada, California, Oregon and the Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Washington territories firmly into the Union and made settlement of the west much more rapid and inexpensive.

The railroad established the nation's economic infrastructure for the future. The far slower, more hazardous and more expensive stagecoach lines from Missouri to California with about 28 days of day and night travel had mostly been used for carrying a few intrepid passengers and mail services. The route along the Oregon, Mormon and California Trails was so rugged at about 2,000 miles (3,200 km) and 140â€"160 days travel over mostly unimproved roads that almost no cargo to coastal states or territories had gone by land. About the only cargo shipped overland by wagons had gone to the "landlocked" cities of Salt Lake City, Utah and later to Virginia City, Carson City, Nevada and Denver, Colorado. In fact, about 50% of the population and more than 90% of the extensive cargo shipments needed in the rapidly developing Pacific states had arrived by sailing ship to the Pacific around Cape Horn or by paddle steamers to Mexico, Nicaragua or Panama, a land transit to the Pacific Ocean and then another paddle steamer to California, Oregon or Washington.

The developing railroads provided the technology for much faster, safer and cheaper transportation of emigrants and goods. The railroads, bankers and the United States government in the East promoted this worldwide migration to attract specific populations for agricultural progress with the sales of land-grant lots, and then provided farmers the cheap and quick transportation for the cornucopia of crops, minerals and timber. The need for wheat and other staples led to the rapid settling of the supposed "Great American Desert" once easy rail transport became available.

Route options

Talk of a transcontinental railroad started in 1830, shortly after steam powered railroads were invented in Great Britain and began to be introduced into the United States. This talk intensified as railroad technology advanced and the Oregon Territory and California were added to United States Territory in 1846 and 1848. Early debates were not so much over whether it would be built, but how it would be paid for and what route it should follow. Three options were broadly considered:

• A "northern route", roughly following the path of the Lewis and Clark Expedition along the Missouri River through present-day northern Montana to Oregon Territory, was considered impractical because of rough terrain and extensive winter snows.
• A "central route" would avoid the worst of the Rocky Mountains by following the Platte River in Nebraska and the South Pass in Wyoming, essentially much of the path of the Oregon Trail.
• A "southern route" would avoid the barrier of the Rockies completely by going across Texas, New Mexico Territory, across the Sonora desert and on to Los Angeles, California.

Asa Whitney

One of the most prominent champions of the central route railroad was Asa Whitney, a distant cousin to cotton gin inventor Eli Whitney. He envisioned a route from Chicago and the Great Lakes to northern California, paid for by the sale of land to settlers along the route.

Whitney traveled widely to solicit support from businessmen and politicians, printed maps and pamphlets, and submitted several proposals to Congress, all at his own expense. In June 1845, he led a team along part of the proposed route to assess its feasibility.

Legislation to begin construction of the Pacific Railroad (called the Memorial of Asa Whitney) was first introduced to Congress by Representative Zadock Pratt. Congress did not immediately act on Whitney's proposal.

The Oregon Question was settled in 1846 when the United States and Great Britain agreed to a Canadianâ€"U.S. boundary at the 49th parallel. U.S. forces took over California in 1846, which came under formal United States control in 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo at the conclusion of the Mexican-American War. The discovery of gold in California in January 1848 set off the California Gold Rush, and the number of settlers going to California skyrocketed. By 1850, California had over 120,000 settlers, arriving by the California Trail and by sea, which was enough to become the 31st state.

The southern route and the Gadsden Purchase

Concerns lingered that snow would make the central route impractical. A survey after 1848 indicated that the best southern route had in fact been overlooked when the U.S. had accepted a boundary proposed by Mexico in their peace treaty. With Santa Anna in power in Mexico, the U.S. in 1853 made the Gadsden Purchase, acquiring the southern portions of what is now New Mexico and Arizona for $10 million ($283,480,000 today). The southern route could now be built entirely within U.S. territory.

Because the U.S. Congress was divided between slave and non-slave state members, it could not reach agreement on supporting construction of a particular route. Each region wanted the railroad because of its benefits. The decision became embroiled in the divisive sectional dispute that eventually turned into the American Civil War. The southern route was not constructed until 1880, when the Southern Pacific Railroad crossed Arizona territory.

Theodore Judah

The next big champion of the central route was Theodore Judah, who undertook to survey a manageable route through what was one of the chief obstacles of a central route to California, the high and rugged Sierra Nevada.

In 1852, Judah was chief engineer for the newly formed Sacramento Valley Railroad, the first railroad built west of the Mississippi River. Although the railroad later went bankrupt once the easy placer gold deposits around Placerville, California were depleted, Judah was convinced that a properly financed railroad could pass from Sacramento through the Sierra Nevada mountains to reach the Great Basin and hook up with rail lines coming from the East.

In 1856, Judah wrote a 13,000-word proposal in support of a Pacific railroad and distributed it to Cabinet secretaries, congressmen and other influential people. In September 1859, Judah was chosen to be the accredited lobbyist for the Pacific Railroad Convention, which indeed approved his plan to survey, finance and engineer the road. Judah returned to Washington in December 1859. He had a lobbying office in the United States Capitol, received an audience with President James Buchanan, and represented the Convention before Congress.

In February 1860, Iowa Representative Samuel Curtis introduced a bill to build the railroad. It passed the House but died when it could not be reconciled with the Senate version.

Judah returned to California in 1860. He continued to search for a more practical route through the Sierras suitable for a railroad. In the summer of 1860, local miner Daniel Strong had surveyed a route over the Sierras for a wagon toll road, which he realized would also suit a railroad. He described his discovery in a letter to Judah. Together, they formed an association to solicit subscriptions from local merchants and businessmen to support their proposed railroad.

From January or February 1861 until July, Judah and Strong led a 10-person expedition to survey the route for the railroad over the Sierra Nevada through Clipper Gap and Emigrant Gap, over Donner Pass, and south to Truckee. They discovered a way across the Sierras that was gradual enough to be made suitable for a railroad, although it still needed a lot of work.

Before major construction could begin, Judah travelled back to New York City to raise funds to buy out The Big Four. However, shortly after arriving in New York, Judah died on November 2, 1863 of yellow fever that he had contracted while traveling over the Panama Railroad's transit of the Isthmus of Panama. The CPRR Engineering Department was taken over by his successor Samuel S. Montegue, as well as Canadian trained Chief Assistant Engineer (later Acting Chief Engineer) Lewis Metzler Clement who also became Superintendent of Track.

The Big Four and Central Pacific Railroad

Main articles: The Big Four and Central Pacific Railroad

Collis Huntington, a hardware merchant, had heard Judah's presentation about the railroad at the St. Charles Hotel in Sacramento in November 1860. He invited Judah to his office to hear his proposal in detail. Huntington changed Judah's strategy of finding several investors and instead sought to raise the money from three partners: Mark Hopkins, his business partner; James Bailey, a jeweler; Leland Stanford, a grocer, future governor of California and founder of Stanford University; and Charles Crocker, a dry-goods merchant and eventual owner of Crocker Banks. They initially invested $1,500 each and formed a board of directors. These investors became known as The Big Four, and their railroad was called the Central Pacific Railroad. Each were eventually to make millions of dollars from their continuing investments and control of the Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR).

Pacific Railroad Act

The Pony Express from 1860 to 1861 was to prove that the Central Nevada Route across Nevada and Utah and the sections of the Oregon Trail across Wyoming and Nebraska were viable during the winter. With the American Civil War raging and a secessionist movement in California gaining steam, the apparent need for the railroad became more urgent.

In 1861, Curtis again introduced a bill to establish the railroad, but it did not pass. After the secession of the southern states, the House of Representatives finally approved it on May 6, 1862, and the Senate on June 20. Lincoln signed it into law on July 1. The act established the two main linesâ€"the Central Pacific from the west and the Union Pacific from the mid-west. Other rail lines were encouraged to build feeder lines.

Each company was required to build only 50 miles (80 km) in the first two years; after that, 50 miles (80 km) more were required each year. Each railroad received $16,000 per mile ($9,940/km) built over an easy grade, $32,000 per mile ($19,880/km) in the high plains, and $48,000 per mile ($29,830/km) in the mountains. This payment was in the form of government bonds that the companies could resell. To allow the railroads to raise additional money, Congress provided additional assistance to the railroad companies in the form of land grants of federal lands. They were granted right-of-ways of 400 feet (100 m) plus 10 square miles (26 km²) of land (ten sections) adjacent to the track for every mile of track built. To avoid a railroad monopoly on good land, the land was not given away in a continuous swath but in a "checkerboard" pattern, leaving federal land in between that could be purchased from the government. The land grant railroads, receiving millions of acres of public land, sold bonds based on the value of the lands, and sold the land to settlers, using the proceeds to build their railroads, and contributing to a rapid settlement of the West. The total area of the land grants to the Union Pacific and Central Pacific was larger than the area of the state of Texas: federal government land grants totaled about 203,128,500 square miles, and state government land grants totaled about 76,565,000 square miles. The race was on to see which railroad company could build the longest section of track (and thus receive the most land and government bonds.)

The bonds and land grants have been frequently characterized as a government subsidy. However, historian Stephen Ambrose has argued against this, since the companies repaid both the capital and interest. He also argues that although the companies were able to sell the land grants in the Sacramento Valley and Nebraska at "a good price", most of the land in Wyoming, Utah and Nevada was "virtually worthless".

Eastern Developments

Eastern Terminus

Once it was decided that the railroad would follow the central route rather than the southern route, there was little question that the western terminus would be Sacramento. However, there was considerable intrigue over the eastern terminus.

The three prime candidates on 250 miles (400 km) of Missouri River between Kansas City and Omaha were:

• Council Bluffs/Omaha, proposed by Thomas C. Durant, via an extension of his proposed Mississippi and Missouri Railroad, via the new Union Pacific Railroad.
• St. Joseph, Missouri via the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad (H&SJ).
• Kansas City, Kansas/Leavenworth, Kansas via the Leavenworth, Pawnee and Western Railroad (LP&W) (later called the Kansas Pacific) controlled initially by Thomas Ewing, Jr. and later by John C. Fremont.

The principal advantages of Council Bluffs/Omaha were that it was well north of the Civil War fighting taking place in Missouri, was the shortest route to the South Pass break in the Rockies in Wyoming, and would follow a fertile river that would encourage settlement.

Missouri's advantages included that it had the only railroad to actually reach the Missouri River on its western border (H&SJ), was more centrally located for lines coming up from Texas and could offer a route servicing Denver, Colorado, the biggest city in the Great American Desert. In 1862, the closest rail lines to Omaha/Council Bluffs were 150 miles (240 km) away and would take five years to reach Omaha.

Thomas C. Durant, who was building the cross-Iowa railroad (the M&M), was literally banking that the Omaha route would be chosen and began buying up land in Nebraska.

In 1857, Durant hired private citizen Abraham Lincoln to represent the M&M in litigation brought by steamboat operators to dismantle Government Bridge, the first railroad bridge across the Mississippi River. The bridge's drawspan was difficult for steamboats to navigate, and many felt the bridge had been built intentionally so. In August 1859, Lincoln, at the behest of M&M attorney Norman Judd, traveled to Council Bluffs to inspect M&M facilities that were to be used to secure a $3,000 loan Lincoln was to hold. On the visit, Lincoln rode the SJ&H railroad and visited railroad locations in Missouri and Kansas before going to Council Bluffs. During the visit, Lincoln was to spend two hours with M&M engineer Grenville M. Dodge at the Pacific House Hotel discussing the merits of starting the railroad in Council Bluffs, and was to visit Cemetery Hill there to look over the proposed route.

Lincoln's ties to Council Bluffs were further strengthened by the fact that he had won the 1860 Republican nomination on the third ballot when the Iowa delegation switched its vote to him. In contrast, Lincoln was to get only 10 percent of the Missouri vote in the 1860 Presidential Election.

While the Pacific Railroad Act was to award the eastern contract to the newly formed Union Pacific, it was left up to then-President Lincoln to formally choose the location for the railroad to start, and Lincoln in 1862 was to follow the advice of his former client.

The competitors were not totally shut out of the contract though. The H&SJ was to be allowed to build a feeder line from Atchison, Kansas, while the LP&W could build a feeder line out of Kansas City, Kansas. These feeder lines were supposed to meet the Union Pacific main line somewhere around the 100th meridian west in central Nebraska, and the feeder lines were to get the same land grant incentives as the Union Pacific.

Thomas Durant and the Union Pacific

Main articles: Thomas C. Durant and Union Pacific Railroad

In contrast to the relatively straightforward arrangements for the Central Pacific, the Union Pacific, which was to ultimately build nearly 2/3 of the track, was mired in controversy and scandals while its controlling partner Thomas C. Durant got rich as he took advantage of lax or non-existent government oversight during the Civil War.

The enabling legislation for the Union Pacific required that no partner was to own more than 10 percent of the stock. However, the Union Pacific had problems selling its stock. Durant enticed investors with a scheme where he would put up the money for the stock if they would just put their names on it. Then Durant wound up taking the stock from the investors, and ended up controlling about half the stock of the railroad.

The initial construction of railroad went over land that Durant owned around Omaha. Being paid by the mile, the railroad built oxbows of extraneous track, never venturing further than 40 miles (64 km) from Omaha in the railroad's first 2½ years.

Durant manipulated market prices on his stocks by spreading rumors about which railroads were to be connected to the Union Pacific. First he ran up the stock of his M&M Railroad while secretly buying stock in the depressed Cedar Rapids and Missouri Railroad (CR&M), then running up CR&M stock with new plans to connect the Union Pacific to it, at which point he began buying back the M&M stock at depressed prices. The scam is estimated to have raised $5 million for his cohorts and him.

Durant kept a low public profile in his machinations as he was only a vice president. He installed a series of respected men such as John Adams Dix as president of the railroad.

On July 4, 1865, the Union Pacific had not gone farther than 40 miles (64 km) from Omahaâ€"even as the Central Pacific had been working away for 2½ years. With the end of the Civil War and increased government supervision in the offing, Durant hired his former M&M engineer Grenville M. Dodge to build the railroad, and the Union Pacific began a mad dash.

Construction

Most of the capital investment needed to build the railroad was generated by selling government-guaranteed bonds (granted per mile of completed track) to interested investors. The Federal donation of right-of-way saved money and time as it did not have to be purchased from others. The financial incentives and bonds would hopefully cover most of the initial capital investment needed to build the railroad. The bonds would be paid back by the sale of government-granted land, as well as prospective passenger and freight income. Most of the engineers and surveyors who figured out how and where to build the railroad on the Union Pacific were engineering college trained. Many of Union Pacific engineers and surveyors were Union Army veterans (including two generals) who had learned their railroad trade keeping the trains running and tracks maintained during the U.S. Civil War. After securing the finances and selecting the engineering team, the next step was to hire the key personnel and prospective supervisors. Nearly all key workers and supervisors were hired because they had previous railroad on-the-job training, knew what needed to be done and how to direct workers to get it done. After the key personnel were hired, the semi-skilled jobs could be filled if there was available labor. The engineering team's main job was to tell the workers where to go, what to do, how to do it, and provide the construction material they would need to get it done.

Survey teams were put out to produce detailed contour maps of the options on the different routes. The engineering team looked at the available surveys and choose what was the "best" route. Survey teams under the direction of the engineers closely led the work crews and marked where and by how much hills would have to be cut and depressions filled or bridged. Coordinators made sure that construction and other supplies were provided when and where needed and additional supplies were ordered as the railroad construction consumed the supplies. Specialized bridging, explosive and tunneling teams were assigned to their specialized jobs. Some jobs like explosive work, tunneling, bridging, heavy cuts or fills were known to take longer than others, so the specialized bridging, tunneling, etc. teams were sent out ahead by wagon trains filled with the necessary supplies and men to get these jobs started and completed by the time the regular track-laying crews arrived. Finance officers made sure the supplies were paid for and men paid for their work. An army of men had to be coordinated and a seemingly never-ending chain of supplies had to be provided. The Central Pacific road crew set a track-laying record by laying 10 mi (16 km) of track in a single day, commemorating the event with a signpost beside the track for passing trains to see.

In addition to the track-laying crews, other crews were busy setting up stations with provisions for loading fuel, water and often also mail, passengers and freight. Personnel had to be hired to run these stations. Maintenance depots had to be built to keep all of the equipment repaired and operational. Telegraph operators had to be hired to man each station to keep track of where the trains were so that trains could run in each direction on the available single track without interference or accidents. Sidings had to be built to allow trains to pass. Provisions had to be made to store and continually pay for coal or wood needed to run the steam locomotives. Water towers had to be built for refilling the water tanks on the engines, and provisions made to keep them full.

Laborers

The majority of the Union Pacific track across the Nebraska and Wyoming territories, prior to entering the Utah territory, was built by veterans of both the Union and Confederate armies, as well as many recent immigrants. Brigham Young, President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, wished to get jobs for his people and see the railroad support the population centers in Ogden and Salt Lake City, Utah. As the track approached Utah Territory, he and his representatives sought and got construction contracts with the Union Pacific to build most of the road through Utah. Union Pacific provided the materials needed or contracted with others to have them supplied. Under these contracts, large work gangs of over 2,000 men, made up almost entirely of Mormons, built nearly all of the Union Pacific track in the Utah territory, including the difficult section in the area of Weber River Canyon that required extensive trestle or bridge building, blasting, cutting, filling and tunneling.

Durant was always hard to extract money from for completed work, and the final Union Pacific train carrying him to the final spike ceremony was held up by an unpaid workers' strike in the railroad town of Piedmont, Wyoming until he paid them for the work they had done. Unfortunately, the Utah workers didn't do the same. Brigham Young's representatives had to go to court and tried in vain to extract all the money Durant had promised them.

The manual labor to build the Central Pacific's roadbed, bridges and tunnels was done primarily by many thousands of emigrant workers from China under the direction of skilled non-Chinese supervisors. The Chinese were commonly referred to at the time as "Celestials" and China as the "Celestial Kingdom." Labor-saving devices in those days consisted primarily of wheelbarrows, horse or mule pulled carts, and a few railroad pulled gondolas. The construction work involved an immense amount of manual labor. Initially, Central Pacific had a hard time hiring and keeping unskilled workers on its line, as many would leave for the prospect of far more lucrative gold or silver mining options elsewhere. Despite the concerns expressed by Charles Crocker, one of the "big four" and a general contractor, that the Chinese were too small in stature, standing at about 58 inches (1.5 m), weighing about 120 pounds (54 kg), and lacking previous experience with railroad work, they decided to try them anyway. After the first few days of trial with a few workers, with noticeably positive results, Crocker decided to hire as many as he could, looking primarily at the California labor force, where the majority of Chinese worked as independent gold miners or in the service industries (e.g.: laundries and kitchens). Most of these Chinese workers were represented by a Chinese "boss" who translated, collected salaries for his crew, kept discipline and relayed orders from an American general supervisor. Most Chinese workers spoke only rudimentary or no English, and the supervisors typically only learned rudimentary Chinese. Many more workers were imported from the Kwangtung Province of China, which at the time, beside great poverty, suffered from the violence of the Taiping Rebellion. Most Chinese workers were planning on returning with their new found "wealth" when the work was completed. Most of the men received between one and three dollars per day, the same as unskilled white workers; but the workers imported directly from China sometimes received less. A diligent worker could save over $20.00/month after paying for food and lodging â€" a "fortune" by Chinese standards. A snapshot of workers in late 1865 showed about 3,000 Chinese and 1,700 white workers employed on the railroad. Nearly all of the white workers were in supervisory or skilled craft positions and made more money than the Chinese.

Most of the early work on the Central Pacific consisted of constructing the railroad track bed, cutting and/or blasting through or around hills, filling in washes, building bridges or trestles, digging and blasting tunnels and then laying the rails over the Sierra Nevada (U.S.) mountains. Once the Central Pacific was out of the Sierras and the Carson Range, progress sped up considerably as the railroad bed could be built over nearly flat ground. In those days, the Central Pacific once did a section of 10 miles (16 km) of track in one day as a "demonstration" of what they could do on flat ground like most of the Union Pacific had in Wyoming and Nebraska.

The track laying was divided up into various parts. In advance of the track layers, surveyors consulting with engineers determined where the track would go. Workers then built and prepared the roadbed, dug or blasted through hills, filled in washes, built trestles, bridges or culverts across streams or valleys, made tunnels if needed, and laid the ties. The actual track-laying gang would then lay rails on the previously laid ties positioned on the roadbed, drive the spikes, and bolt the fishplate bars to each rail. At the same time, another gang would distribute telegraph poles and wire along the grade, while the cooks prepared dinner and the clerks busied themselves with accounts, records, using the telegraph line to relay requests for more materials and supplies or communicate with supervisors. Usually the workers lived in camps built near their work site. Supplies were ordered by the engineers and hauled by rail, possibly then to be loaded on wagons if they were needed ahead of the rail head. Camps were moved when the rail head moved a significant distance. Later, as the railroad started moving long distances every few days, some railroad cars had bunkhouses built in them that moved with the workersâ€"the Union Pacific had used this technique since 1866. Almost all of the roadbed work had to be done manually, using shovels, picks, axes, two-wheeled dump carts, wheelbarrows, ropes, scrapers, etc., with initially only black powder available for blasting. Carts pulled by mules, and horses were about the only labor saving devices available then. Lumber and ties were usually provided by independent contractors who cut, hauled and sawed the timber as required.

Tunnels were blasted through hard rock by drilling holes in the rock face by hand and filling them with black powder. Sometimes cracks were found which could be filled with powder and blasted loose. The loosened rock would be collected and hauled out of the tunnel for use in a fill area or as roadbed, or else dumped over the side as waste. A foot or so advance on a tunnel face was a typical day's work. Some tunnels took almost a year to finish and the Summit Tunnel, the longest, took almost two years. In the final days of working in the Sierras, the recently invented nitroglycerin explosive was introduced and used on the last tunnels including Summit Tunnel.

Supply trains carried all the necessary material for the construction up to the rail head, with mule or horse-drawn wagons carrying it the rest of the ways if required. Ties were typically unloaded from horse-drawn or mule-drawn wagons and then placed on the track ballast and levelled to get ready for the rails. Rails, which weighed the most, were often kicked off the flatcars and carried by gangs of men on each side of the rail to where needed. The rails just in front of the rail car would be placed first, measured for the correct gauge with gauge sticks and then nailed down on the ties with spike mauls. The fishplates connecting the ends of the rails would be bolted on and then the car pushed by hand to the end of the rail and rail installation repeated.

Track ballast was put between the ties as they progressed. Where a proper railbed had already been prepared, the work progressed rapidly. Constantly needed supplies included “food, water, ties, rails, spikes, fishplates, nuts and bolts, track ballast, telegraph poles, wire, fire wood (or coal on the UP) and water for the steam train locomotives, etc.” After a flatcar was unloaded, it would usually be hooked to a small locomotive and pulled back to a siding, so another flatcar with rails etc. could be advanced to the rail head. Since juggling railroad cars took time on flat ground, where wagon transport was easier, the rail cars would be brought to the end of the line by steam locomotive, unloaded, and the flat car returned immediately to a siding for another loaded car of either ballast or rails. Temporary sidings were often installed where it could be easily done to expedite getting needed supplies to the rail head.

The railroad tracks, spikes, telegraph wire, locomotives, railroad cars, supplies etc. were imported from the east on sailing ships that sailed the about 18,000 miles (29,000 km) and about 200 day trip around Cape Horn. Some freight was put on Clipper ships which could do this same trip in about 120 days. Some passengers and high priority freight were shipped over the newly (1855) completed Panama Railroad across the Isthmus of Panama. Using paddle steamers to and from Panama, this short cut could be done in as little as 40 days. Supplies were normally offloaded at the Sacramento, California docks where the railroad started.

The railroad ties were cut by sub-contracted sawyers from timber logged by lumberjacks on forested property that was granted to the railroad in alternate sections of land over the Sierras, with 640 acres or 259 ha to a section. Some independent loggers cut and delivered ties cut from their own logging sites on separate contracts. Redwood ties were preferred because of their decay resistance, even though the land grants included no redwood trees. Most of the early Central Pacific locomotives used wood cut from these government granted timber sites for fuelâ€"look for their cone shaped spark arresting exhaust stacks. Union Pacific used extensive coal deposits located along their sections of railroad for fuelâ€"look for their cylindrical shaped smoke stacks.

Shipments of the highly explosive nitroglycerin for tunneling by the Central Pacific were halted after two ships carrying it had blown up. These accidents had caused much damage, so local officials prohibited its transport in their harbors. Both railroads had to learn to produce it themselves much nearer where it was being used. This problem of "touchy" nitroglycerin would be largely solved with the invention of dynamite by Alfred Nobel in 1867 in Sweden, which used "stabilized" nitroglycerin. Unfortunately, this invention came too late for use on the Transcontinental Railroad.

In addition to track laying over a course laid out by the engineers and surveyors, the operation also required the efforts of hundreds of railroad bed builders, bridge builders, trestle builders, lumberjacks, sawyers, tunnelers, explosive experts, blacksmiths, carpenters, civil engineers, masons, teamsters, telegraphers, and even cooks, to name just a few of the trades and skills involved in construction of the railroad. Depending on the job, different mixes of personnel were required.

Upon the completion of their work on the CPRR's portion of the Pacific Railroad, many Chinese workers moved on to other railroad construction jobs including with the Central and Southern Pacific. Of those that left the company's employ, some returned to their families in China with their savings, while others sent to China for wives and settled in various western communities as miners, laundrymen, and restaurateurs. Some returned with their families and settled into "China towns" in various cities. The majority who remained in the United States, however, returned to and settled in the San Francisco Bay area, Sacramento, Marysville and elsewhere along the Pacific coast. Because of the later restrictions on the immigration of Chinese workers, many never got married or reunited with their families if they stayed in the U.S.

Central Pacific

On January 8, 1863, Governor Leland Stanford ceremoniously broke ground in Sacramento, California, to begin construction of the Central Pacific Railroad. After great initial progress along the Sacramento Valley, construction was slowed, first by the foothills of the Sierra Nevada (U.S.), then by cutting a railroad bed up the mountains themselves. As they progressed higher in the mountains, winter snowstorms and a shortage of reliable labor compounded the problems. Consequently, after a trial crew of Chinese workers was hired and found to work successfully, the Central Pacific expanded its efforts to hire more emigrant laborersâ€"mostly Chinese. Emigrants from poverty stricken regions of China, many of which suffered from the strife of the Taiping Rebellion, seemed to be more willing to tolerate the living and working conditions on the railroad construction, and progress on the railroad continued. The increasing necessity for tunneling as they proceeded up the mountains then began to slow progress of the line yet again.

The first step of construction was to survey the route and determine the locations where large excavations, tunnels and bridges would be needed. Crews could then start work in advance of the railroad reaching these locations. Supplies and workers were brought up to the work locations by wagon teams and work on several different sections proceeded simultaneously. One advantage of working on tunnels in winter was found that tunnel work could often proceed right on through the winter since the work was nearly all "inside". Unfortunately, living quarters would have to be built outside and getting new supplies was difficult. Working and living in winter in the presence of snow slides and avalanches caused some deaths.

To carve a tunnel, one worker held a rock drill on the granite face while one to two other workers swung eighteen-pound sledgehammers to sequentially hit the drill which slowly advanced into the rock. Once the hole was about 10 inches (25 cm) deep, it would be filled with black powder, a fuse set and then ignited from a safe distance. Nitroglycerin, which had just been invented, was only used to help construct the longest tunnel, the Summit Tunnel (a.k.a. Tunnel No. 6), which reached 1,659 feet (506 m).

The Chinese built 15 tunnels for Central Pacific. These tunnels were about 32 feet high and 16 feet wide. When tunnels with vertical shafts were dug to increase construction speed, and tunneling began in the middle of the tunnel, at first hand powered derricks were used to help remove loose rocks up the vertical shafts. These derricks were later replaced with steam hoists as work progressed. By using vertical shafts, four faces of the tunnel could be worked at the same time, two in the middle and one at each end. The average daily progress in some tunnels was only 0.85 feet a day per face, which was very slow, or 1.18 feet daily according to historian George Kraus. J. O. Wilder, a Central Pacific-Southern Pacific employee, commented that “The Chinese were as steady, hard-working a set of men as could be found. With the exception of a few whites at the west end of Tunnel No. 6, the laboring force was entirely composed of Chinamen with white foremen and a "boss/translator". A single foreman (often Irish) with a gang of 30 to 40 Chinese men generally constituted the force at work at each end of a tunnel; of these, 12 to 15 men worked on the heading, and the rest on the bottom, removing blasted material. When a gang was small or the men were needed elsewhere, the bottoms were worked with fewer men or stopped so as to keep the headings going.” The laborers usually worked three shifts of 8 hours each per day, while the foremen worked in two shifts of 12 hours each, managing the laborers. Once out of the Sierras, construction was much easier and faster. Horace Hamilton Minkler, track foreman for the Central Pacific, laid the last rail and tie before the Last Spike was driven.

In order to keep the CPRR's Sierra grade open during the winter months, beginning in 1867, some 37 miles of massive wooden snow sheds and galleries were built between Blue Cañon and Truckee, covering cuts and other points where there was danger of avalanches. Some 2,500 men and six material trains were employed in this work, which was completed the fall of 1869. The sheds were built with two sides and a steep peaked roof mostly of locally cut hewn timber and round logs. Snow galleries had one side and a roof that sloped upward until it met the mountain side, thus permitting avalanches to slide over the galleries, some of which extended up the mountainside as much as two hundred feet. Masonry walls such as the "Chinese Walls" at Donner Summit were built across canyons to prevent avalanches from striking the side of the vulnerable wooden construction. A few concrete sheds (mostly at crossovers) are still in use today.

Union Pacific

The major investor in the Union Pacific was Thomas Clark Durant, who had made his stake money by smuggling Confederate cotton with the aid of Grenville M. Dodge. Durant chose routes that would favor places where he held land, and he announced connections to other lines at times that suited his share dealings. He paid an associate to submit the construction bid to another company he controlled, Crédit Mobilier, manipulating the finances and government subsidies and making himself another fortune. Durant hired Dodge as chief engineer and Jack Casement as construction boss.

In the East, the progress started in Omaha, Nebraska, by the Union Pacific Railroad which initially proceeded very quickly because of the open terrain of the Great Plains. This changed, however, as the work entered Indian-held lands. The Native Americans saw the addition of the railroad as a violation of their treaties with the United States. War parties began to raid the moving labor camps that followed the progress of the line. Union Pacific responded by increasing security and hiring marksmen to kill American Bison, which were both a physical threat to trains and the primary food source for many of the Plains Indians. The Native Americans then began killing laborers when they realized that the so-called "Iron Horse" threatened their existence. Security measures were further strengthened, and progress on the railroad continued.

The Last Spike

Six years after the groundbreaking, laborers of the Central Pacific Railroad from the west and the Union Pacific Railroad from the east met at Promontory Summit, Utah. It was here on May 10, 1869, that Leland Stanford drove The Last Spike (or golden spike) that joined the rails of the transcontinental railroad. The spike is now on display at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, while a second "Last" Golden Spike is also on display at the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento. In perhaps the world's first live mass-media event, the hammers and spike were wired to the telegraph line so that each hammer stroke would be heard as a click at telegraph stations nationwideâ€"the hammer strokes were missed, so the clicks were sent by the telegraph operator. As soon as the ceremonial spike had been replaced by an ordinary iron spike, a message was transmitted to both the East Coast and West Coast that simply read, "DONE." The country erupted in celebration upon receipt of this message. Travel from coast to coast was reduced from six months or more to just one week.

Aftermath

Railroad developments

When the last spike was driven, the rail network was not yet connected to the Atlantic or Pacific but merely connected Omaha to Sacramento. To get from Sacramento to the Pacific, the Central Pacific purchased the struggling Western Pacific Railroad (unrelated to the railroad of the same name that would later parallel its route) and resumed construction on it, which had halted in 1866 due to funding troubles. In November 1869, the Central Pacific finally connected Sacramento to the east side of San Francisco Bay by rail at Oakland, California, where freight and passengers completed their transcontinental link to the city by ferry.

The original route from the Central Valley to the Bay skirted the Delta by heading south out of Sacramento through Stockton and crossing the San Joaquin River at Mossdale, then climbed over the Altamont Pass and reached the East Bay through Niles Canyon. The Western Pacific was originally chartered to go to San Jose, but the Central Pacific decided to build along the East Bay instead, as going from San Jose up the Peninsula to San Francisco itself would have brought it into conflict with competing interests. The railroad entered Alameda and Oakland from the south, roughly paralleling what would later become U.S. Route 50 and later still Interstates 5, 205, and 580. A more direct route was obtained with the purchase of the California Pacific Railroad, crossing the Sacramento River and proceeding southwest through Davis to Benicia, where it crossed the Carquinez Strait by means of an enormous train ferry, then followed the shores of the San Pablo and San Francisco bays to Richmond and the Port of Oakland (paralleling U.S. Route 40 which ultimately became Interstate 80). In 1930, a rail bridge across the Carquinez replaced the Benicia ferries.

Very early on, the Central Pacific learned that it would have trouble maintaining an open track in winter across the Sierras. At first they tried plowing the road with special snowplows mounted on their steam engines. When this was only partially successful, an extensive process of building snow sheds over some of the track was instituted to protect it from deep snows and avalanches. These eventually succeeded at keeping the tracks clear for all but a few days of the year.

Both railroads soon instituted extensive upgrade projects to build better bridges, viaducts and dugways as well as install heavier duty rails, stronger ties, better road beds etc. The original track had often been laid as fast as possible with only secondary attention to maintenance and durability. The primary incentive had been getting the subsidies, which meant that upgrades of all kinds were routinely required in the following years.

The Union Pacific would not connect Omaha to Council Bluffs until completing the Union Pacific Missouri River Bridge in 1873.

Several years after the end of the Civil War, the competing railroads coming from Missouri finally realized their initial strategic advantage and a building boom ensued. In July 1869, the H&SJ finished the Hannibal Bridge in Kansas City which was the first bridge to cross the Missouri River. This in turn connected to Kansas Pacific trains going from Kansas City to Denver, which in turn had built the Denver Pacific Railway connecting to the Union Pacific. In August 1870, the Kansas Pacific drove the last spike connecting to the Denver Pacific line at Strasburg, Colorado and the first true Atlantic to Pacific United States railroad was completed.

Kansas City's head start in connecting to a true transcontinental railroad contributed to it rather than Omaha becoming the dominant rail center west of Chicago.

The Kansas Pacific became part of the Union Pacific in 1880.

On June 4, 1876, an express train called the Transcontinental Express arrived in San Francisco via the First Transcontinental Railroad only 83 hours and 39 minutes after it had left New York City. Only ten years before, the same journey would have taken months over land or weeks on ship, possibly all the way around South America.

The Central Pacific got a direct route to San Francisco when it was merged with the Southern Pacific Railroad to create the Southern Pacific Company in 1885. The Union Pacific initially took over the Southern Pacific in 1901 but was forced by the U.S. Supreme Court to divest it because of monopoly concerns. The two railroads would once again unite in 1996 when the Southern Pacific was sold to the Union Pacific.

Having been bypassed with the completion of the Lucin Cutoff in 1904, the Promontory Summit rails were pulled up in 1942 to be recycled for the World War II effort. This process began with a ceremonial "undriving" at the Last Spike location. In 1957, Congress authorized the Golden Spike National Historic Site. On May 10, 2006, on the anniversary of the driving of the spike, Utah announced that its state quarter design would be a representation of the driving of the Last (Golden) Spike.

Crédit Mobilier

Despite the transcontinental success and millions in government subsidies, the Union Pacific faced bankruptcy less than three years after the Last Spike as details surfaced about overcharges that Crédit Mobilier had billed Union Pacific for the formal building of the railroad. The scandal hit epic proportions in the United States presidential election, 1872, which saw the re-election of Ulysses S. Grant and became the biggest scandal of the Gilded Age. It would not be resolved until the death of the congressman who was supposed to have reined in its excesses but instead wound up profiting from it.

Durant had initially come up with the scheme to have Crédit Mobilier subcontract to do the actual track work. Durant gained control of the company after buying out employee Herbert Hoxie for $10,000. Under Durant's guidance, Crédit Mobilier was charging Union Pacific often twice or more the customary cost for track work (thus in effect paying himself to build the railroad). The process mired down Union Pacific work.

Lincoln asked Massachusetts Congressman Oakes Ames, who was on the railroad committee, to clean things up and get the railroad moving. Ames got his brother Oliver Ames, Jr. named president of the Union Pacific, while he himself became president of Crédit Mobilier.

Ames then in turn gave stock options to other politicians while at the same time continuing the lucrative overcharges. The scandal was to implicate Vice President Schuyler Colfax (who was cleared) and future President James Garfield among others.

The scandal broke in 1872 when the New York Sun published correspondence detailing the scheme between Henry S. McComb and Ames. In the ensuing Congressional investigation, it was recommended that Ames be expelled from Congress, but this was reduced to a censure and Ames died within three months.

Durant later left the Union Pacific and a new rail baron Jay Gould became the dominant stockholder. As a result of the Panic of 1873, Gould was able to pick up bargains, among them the control of the Union Pacific Railroad and Western Union.

Visible remains

Visible remains of the historic line are still easily locatedâ€"hundreds of miles are still in service today, especially through the Sierra Nevada Mountains and canyons in Utah and Wyoming. While the original rail has long since been replaced because of age and wear, and the roadbed upgraded and repaired, the lines generally run on top of the original, handmade grade. Vista points on Interstate 80 through California's Truckee Canyon provide a panoramic view of many miles of the original Central Pacific line and of the snow sheds which made winter train travel safe and practical.

In areas where the original line has been bypassed and abandoned, primarily in Utah, the road grade is still obvious, as are numerous cuts and fills, especially the Big Fill a few miles east of Promontory. The sweeping curve which connected to the east end of the Big Fill now passes a Thiokol rocket research and development facility.

The Last Spike site is preserved as a National Historical Site, with replica engines of Union Pacific No. 119 and Central Pacific Jupiter having been built by O'Connor Engineering Laboratories. The engines are fired up periodically by the National Park Service for the public.

Current passenger service

Amtrak's California Zephyr, a daily passenger service from Emeryville, California (San Francisco Bay Area) to Chicago, uses the First Transcontinental Railroad from Sacramento to central Nevada. Because this rail line currently operates in a directional running setup across most of Nevada, the California Zephyr will switch to the Central Corridor at either Winnemucca or Wells.

Popular culture

The joining of the Union Pacific line with the Central Pacific line in May 1869 at Promontory Summit, Utah, was one of the major inspirations for French writer Jules Verne's book entitled Around the World in Eighty Days, published in 1873.

The feat is depicted in various movies, including the 1939 film Union Pacific, starring Joel McCrea and Barbara Stanwyck and directed by Cecil B. DeMille, which depicts the fictional Central Pacific investor Asa Barrows obstructing attempts of the Union Pacific to reach Ogden, Utah.

While not exactly accurate, John Ford's 1924 silent movie The Iron Horse captures the fervent nationalism that drove public support for the project. Among the cooks serving the film's cast and crew between shots were some of the Chinese laborers who actually worked on the Central Pacific section of the railroad.

The 1962 film How the West Was Won has a whole segment devoted to the construction; one of the movie's most famous scenes, filmed in Cinerama, is of a buffalo stampede over the railroad.

The construction of what presumably is - or is suggested to be - the Transcontinental Railroad provides the backdrop of the 1968 epic spaghetti western Once Upon a Time in the West, directed by Italian director Sergio Leone.

Kristiana Gregory's book The Great Railroad Race (part of the "Dear America" series) is written as the fictional diary of Libby West, who chronicles the end of the railroad construction and the excitement which engulfed the country at the time.

Graham Masterton's 1981 novel A Man of Destiny (published in the UK as Railroad) is a fictionalised account of the line's construction.

In the 1999 Will Smith film, Wild Wild West, the joining ceremony is the setting of an assassination attempt on then U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant by the film's antagonist Dr. Miguelito Quixote Loveless.

The building of the railway is covered by the 2004 BBC documentary series Seven Wonders of the Industrial World in episode 6, "The Line".

The series American Experience also documents the railway in the episode titled "Transcontinental Railroad".

The main character in The Claim (2000) is a surveyor for the Central Pacific Railroad, and the film is partially about the efforts of a frontier mayor to have the railroad routed through his town.

The popular British television show Doctor Who featured the Transcontinental Railroad in a BBC audio book entitled The Runaway Train, read by Matt Smith and written for audio by Oli Smith.

The children's book Ten Mile Day by Mary Ann Fraser tells the story of the record setting push by the Central Pacific in which they set a record by laying 10 miles (16 km) of track in a single day on April 28, 1869 to settle a $10,000 bet.

The construction of the Transcontinental Railroad provides the setting for the AMC television series Hell on Wheels. Thomas Durant is a regular character in the series and is portrayed by actor Colm Meaney.

In 2015, a Lego model depicting the Golden Spike Ceremony, the event that symbolically marked the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad, was submitted to the Lego Ideas website.

See also

• Overland Route (Union Pacific Railroad)
• California and the railroads
• Chin Lin Sou
• Hell on Wheels
• Transcontinental railroad
• Interstate 80 â€" contemporary New York-to-San Francisco transport link (highway).

Notes

References

Further reading

• Allen, James B.; Glen M. Leonard (1976). The Story of the Latter-day Saints. Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book Company. 
• Ambrose, Stephen E. (2000). Nothing Like It In The World; The men who built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863â€"1869. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-84609-8. 
• Bain, David Haward (1999). Empire Express; Building the first Transcontinental Railroad. Viking Penguin. ISBN 0-670-80889-X. 
• Beebe, Lucius (1969). The Central Pacific & The Southern Pacific Railroads: Centennial Edition. Howell-North. ISBN 0-8310-7034-X. 
• Cooper, Bruce C., "Riding the Transcontinental Rails: Overland Travel on the Pacific Railroad 1865â€"1881" (2005), Polyglot Press, Philadelphia ISBN 1-4115-9993-4
• Cooper, Bruce Clement (Ed), "The Classic Western American Railroad Routes". New York: Chartwell Books/Worth Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-7858-2573-9; ISBN 0-7858-2573-8; BINC: 3099794.
• Duran, Xavier, “The First U.S. Transcontinental Railroad: Expected Profits and Government Intervention,” Journal of Economic History, 73 (March 2013), 177â€"200.
• Lee, Willis T., Ralph W. Stone, and Hoyt S. Gale (1916). Guidebook of the Western United States, Part B. The Overland Route. USGS Bulletin 612. 
• White, Richard. Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (2010)
• Willumson, Glenn. Iron Muse: Photographing the Transcontinental Railroad (University of California Press; 2013) 242 pages; studies the production, distribution, and publication of images of the railroad in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

External links

Media related to First Transcontinental Railroad at Wikimedia Commons

• "I Hear the Locomotives: The Impact of the Transcontinental Railroad"
• Golden Spike National Historical Site in Utah
• Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum
• Union Pacific Railroad History
• The Transcontinental Railroad
• Pacific Railway Act and related resources at the Library of Congress
• Chinese-American Contribution to transcontinental railroad
• Booknotes interview with David Howard Bain on Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad, March 5, 2000.
• Linda Hall Library's Transcontinental Railroad educational site with free, full-text access to 19th century American railroad periodicals

Maps

• Route map at the Library of Congress
• Map of Union Pacific Railroad with Dates
• Abandoned route of the transcontinental railroad in Utah (with map)