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THE TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD

The Pathway that United a Nation

By: Brendan Nee and Preston Theler

Transcontinental Links

Transcontinental Track

      In April of 1869 the American frontier was as exotic as the moon is today. In that time, to get from east to west a person had three options. The first was a four month sea voyage around Cape Horn. The waters around Cape Horn were treacherous and many perished during this journey. The second of these options was an excruciating month long horseback journey through the malaria infested Isthmus of Panama due to the fact that the Panama Canal was not yet built. This was also a very dangerous and often fatal journey. The third was a several month journey crossing the American frontier either by wagon or by foot. This was the most popular of the three options but was by no means easy. People generally left from Independence, MO. This city was on the edge of the frontier and was the last port of civilization before the wild and untamed West.

     These; pioneers that wanted to get across the frontier came from many backgrounds. Some were rich and others were poor. They came for many different reasons. Some were looking to find their fortune panning for gold, others were looking to seek a new life in the fertile farmland of what is now Oregon. Some went for religious reasons like the Mormons who were persecuted in the east and went to the Salt Lake Basin to start a new community. All of the people had to cross the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, the Great Basin and the Sierra Nevada to reach their final destination. While these brave pioneers were making this precarious journey, it was pretty hard to imagine that a great railroad would soon follow the same terrain. However, one man did have such a vision.

      Asa Whitney, a New York merchant, was one of the first men to seriously suggest a transcontinental railroad. In 1844, he made a proposition to Congress to sell him a strip of land from Wisconsin to the Pacific Ocean at 16 cents an acre. Whitney wanted this strip of land to be 60 miles wide. He planned to finance the building of the railroad by laying a few miles of track making the land around it more valuable. He would then sell off the land and use the money to build another few miles of railroad. He foretold that in 25 years, there would be a railroad running east to west.

     In; 1861, a group of four men that would soon help guide the construction of the railroad from the West met together for the first time on the second story of a hardware store in California. Collis Huntington was one of these members. He was a young entrepreneur. In 1854, Huntington formed a partnership with Mark Hopkins selling tools in their hardware store, the same hardware store in which the 1861 meeting took place. Also, at one time he had the market cornered on potatoes. He said, "I have always been plotting." Mark Hopkins was the oldest member of the "Big Four" at forty-seven years old. He, too, owned the hardware store where this meeting took place. Hopkins was in charge of the entire bookkeeping system of the Central Pacific Railroad. Leland Stanford was an early Californian Republican. He was the wealthiest of the "Big Four". In 1861, he won the election for governor of the State of California. Stanford went on to found Stanford University and to purchase half a million acres of California's finest land. Charles Crocker was a workaholic from Indiana. He regularly rose at 4:00 in the morning and worked until bedtime. Crocker moved to Sacramento in 1850 after a long overland trip with his brothers. He opened a store which burned down a year after it was built. He was a man of fierce stamina and stubbornness.

      The "Big Four" hired a man named Theodore Dehone Judah to go to Washington to lobby for a railroad act to be passed by Congress. He pleaded that the railroad could not be built without government support and that the Government needed the railroad to settle the West. Congress debated passing the Railroad Act.

      The main argument in Congress was over the choice of the city that the railroad would originate. The city that would be chosen would have a tremendous commercial advantage over all others. Stephen A. Douglas suggested that the railroad start in Chicago. The editor of Police Gazette said that Independence, MO was the rightful starting place while John C. Calhoun was pushing for Memphis, TN as the starting place. To settle this argument, Congress decided to begin the most exhaustive investigation of the West that had ever been performed at that time.

      Many people were hired to find the easiest way to get a railroad from east to west. They included artists, naturalists, botanists, geologists, zoologists, engineers, and cartographers. The investigation was started in 1853 and was finished four years later when the final eleven volume report of the findings was handed in. Instead of helping Congress choose a route, this report actually confused the matter. As it turned out, there were several good routes for the railroad. Jefferson Davis, the Secretary of War and soon to be president of the Confederacy, was throwing his support for the southern route. The southern route would indeed be cheaper, but all of the northern Congressmen supported the northern route.

      With all of these arguments, most people were doubtful that the railroad would ever be built. In building the railroad, huge amounts of money would be absorbed with no promise of return until the railroad was finished. Most thought that building the railroad would take at least ten years.

      More and more pressure was being put on Congress to pass a bill that would charter a corporation to build the railroad. The Civil War proved to be what was necessary to prompt Congress to pass such a bill. In May and June of 1862, a year after the Civil War had started, both houses of Congress passed the Pacific Railroad Act. On July 1, 1862, it was signed into law by Abraham Lincoln. This Act chartered a corporation called the Union Pacific Railroad Company. It also chartered the Central Pacific Railroad Company to start in California and build a railroad west to the state line.

      The Government could not build the railroad alone. They needed private investment to build the railroad. To do this, the Government used two different methods of attracting private investment. One of the lures that was used was an enticing land grant. It was given based on miles of track laid. For each mile laid, the railroad company would get 10 miles on alternating sides of the track. The rest of the land would belong to the Federal Government. The other part of the government lure for private investment was in government bonds. They were given on a mileage basis and were to be repaid in 30 years at 6 percent interest. The bonds were given out as follows: $16,000 per mile of level ground; $32,000 per mile of foothills; and $48,000 per mile of mountainous terrain.

      This plan to lure investors, however, didn't work. The Federal aid alone was not enough to build the railroad. The day that the stock of the Union Pacific Railroad Company hit the stock market, it flopped terribly. A measly 31 shares were sold. Congress realized that the amount of land, and the amount of the bonds would have to be increased. Two years later Congress amended the Act. They doubled the land grant and changed the bond loan from a first to a second mortgage.

      The Union Pacific Railroad Company was to start at the Missouri River and build a railroad over the Nebraska Plains, over the Rockies, and through the Great Salt Lake Basin until it met Central Pacific's rails. Just where the railroad was to start on the Missouri River was undecided. There was a lot of fighting between the towns in Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska that were on the Missouri River. Each city wanted the railroad to start in their city. It was left up to Congress as to where the railroad was to start. Congress finally decided on Omaha.

"The tide of immigration and civilization must be allowed to roll onward."

Thomas Hart Benton
MO Senator
1850

      In October 1863, the Union Pacific Railroad Company had their first meeting. Thirty directors were chosen, General John A. Dix was elected president, and Thomas C. Durant was elected Vice President. Dix never followed through with the things that were expected of him in his office, so Durant assumed the position.

      On December 2, 1863, a groundbreaking ceremony for the Union Pacific was held near the Missouri River. The Governor of Nebraska was there with the large crowd that had gathered on that cold day. They applauded when the first shovel full of dirt from the Transcontinental Railroad was lifted up by a rusty shovel and heaved into what looked like the start of a pile by a dirty looking railroad employee. Grading crews started immediately after the ground was broken. However, eighteen months later, rails had yet to be laid.

      The Central Pacific chose October 26, 1863, to be the day that the first rail would be laid. This was not only the first rail on the Central Pacific Railroad, but also the first rail to be laid for the Transcontinental Railroad. Huntington, however, protested the event. He said, "If you want to jubilate in driving the first spike go ahead and do it. I don't. These mountains look too ugly and I see too much work ahead."

      There were many problems with this new railroad. The main one was the fact that Omaha had yet to get a railroad connecting it to the east. The nearest railroad was over 100 miles away, and it would take four years to reach Omaha. The best way to get to Omaha was by the Missouri River whose treacherous currents littered the banks with destroyed riverboats. Another problem was that wood was scarce on the Nebraska plains so all the railroad crossties had to be imported. Also, the Civil War was going on which made the price of materials incredibly high.

      After the surrender of the South in the Civil War, things started looking better for the Union Pacific Railroad. Thousands of workers straight from the Union and Confederate armies streamed into Omaha to work for the railroad. This was mainly because of the promises of high wages and steady work that was being offered by the railroad. Another good thing for the Union Pacific was that the iron for rails spikes and locomotives was now less costly and more easily available. Also, investors started to put more of their money into the railroad. This was mainly because because Congress increased the land grant.

      Along with the thousands of soldiers that came to work on the railroad was a general named Grenville M. Dodge. Durant hired him to be the Union Pacific's Chief Engineer. Durant and Dodge made a good team. Durant handled the funding and political aspects of building the railroad, while Dodge worked on encouraging the workers and getting the job done on time, even with the many obstacles that were necessary to overcome. Track Laying

      The railroad pushed slowly west. By the end of 1865 there were 40 miles of track laid into Nebraska Territory. The route was to follow the Platte River west for 400 miles. It was almost the same route that thousands of pioneers had taken on their long overland trip to the west. Dodge was very familiar with this route from his days of being a surveyor for the Rock Island Railroad. In 1866, 250 more miles of track had been added to the Union Pacific which brought the line to present day North Platte.

      When the railroad line reached the 100th meridian of longitude, Durant came across a great publicity opportunity. This opportunity to have a big party to celebrate the railroad reaching the 100th meridian. The exact point on the railroad at the 100th meridian was 247 miles from civilization, but that didn't matter to Durant. He invited lots of famous people including politicians, journalists, a marquis, and an earl.

      The guests were transported by rail to St. Joseph, MO, where they boarded a riverboat for an upstream trip to Omaha. At Omaha, they boarded excursion trains that took them to the site. These famous people tented in the wilderness for three nights. Durant had arranged some pretty strange things for the guests. For the first night, Durant paid some Native Americans to stage a mock war dance. Later that night, the same Native Americans pretended to raid their camp. The next day, he arranged a fake Indian war, and had some vaudeville acts perform. On the third day, Durant started a prairie fire for the visitors. They watched the fire consume the prairie from the safety of their cars, as they rode back to Omaha.

      This celebration brought the railroad much publicity. This was due to the large number of reporters that were invited. Stories of the excursion appeared in all of the major newspapers across the country. This brought new investors, which in turn brought more money into the railroad's treasury.
Working Scenes
Narrow passages like this were commonplace on the route.

      By the end of 1867, Congress had amended the Pacific Railroad Act once again. It was changed so that the Central Pacific Railroad could build past the California state line. They were to build until the two railroads met.

      As the two railroads were nearing each other, Dodge picked up the pace. By the end of 1868, the Union Pacific Track crews had laid over 625 miles. They had reached the Utah border. Congress had not yet decided on a meeting place for both railroads, so both railroads continued grading right past each other in order to get as much land from the government as possible. Over 100 miles of duplicate parallel grade were built. Often, the competing graders would set off charges within 100 feet of each other without any warning to the other company. Finally, on April 10, 1869, Congress agreed upon the meeting point of Promontory Summit in what was then the Utah Territory.

      When work started in Omaha, there were only 250 workers. Now the number of workers was over 10,000. The majority of the workers from the Union Pacific Railroad were Irish, whereas the majority of the workers for the Central Pacific were Chinese. Almost all of these workers had fought in the Civil War. On April 28th, an amazing 10 miles of track were laid in one day. One reporter who was watching some workmen wrote, "It is a grand anvil chorus across the plains and mountains in triple time: three strokes to the spike; ten spikes to the rail; 400 rails to the mile; 425 miles on the road to Promontory."

     Once; the meeting point was agreed upon, the two railroads worked to get there. May 8th, 1969, was chosen to be the day that the two tracks were to be joined. A train carrying passengers from the East and the directors of the Union Pacific Railroad was sent from Omaha. Due to the runoff from melting snow, the Devil's Gate trestle bridge collapsed. The train from the East was delayed a day while it waited for the trestle to be repaired. Due to the delay, the entire ceremony had to be postponed two days.

      While the Devil's Gate trestle was being fixed, some disgruntled workers for the Union Pacific seized this opportunity to hold up the train until they received money. These four men loosened the pin on the directors' car so that when the engineer pulled away, the directors' car was left. The four armed men demanded to be paid $500,000. Durant calmly agreed and telegraphed to have the money sent. The money finally arrived and Durant was on his way.

      The delayed Union Pacific car finally arrived at Promontory Summit at 10:30 AM on May 10th, 1869. Durant stayed in his car with a severe headache. By chance, three companies of the 21st U.S. Infantry arrived while they were marching from Omaha to San Francisco. Before the ceremony, Durant came out into the crowd. Union Pacific Irishmen laid the second to last rail and some Central Pacific Chinese laid the last rail. The golden spike was not the last spike. It was inserted into a specially drilled hole and was never struck. The last spike was polished iron. No one was sure of who was going to deliver the last blow to the last spike. In the end, Leland Stanford was chosen to do the honors. On his first attempt, he missed. Finally, though, he hit it. Durant finished it off.

      W. N. Shilling, the telegraph operator, signaled this historic blow to both east and west. This was the first time that a nationwide telegraph hookup had been achieved.. As the railroad was being built, telegraph lines were being put up beside it. When the last spike was driven, church bells and sirens rang around the country.
Engineering Feat
This Plaque is found in Golden Spike National Histoic Site in Promontory, UT.

      The reason that so much information is known of the building of the Transcontinental Railroad is because of Durant's realization that the Transcontinental Railroad was major history, and that this history should be recorded. To do this, he hired a photographer named Andrew J. Russell. Russell photographed the building of the Union Pacific Railroad from Cheyenne to the completion of the railroad. His pictures were made into stereopticon cards which were very popular at the time. The quality of his pictures are remarkable. The camera that he used was large and bulky. Also, the negatives had to be developed directly after they were taken. To do this, Russell had a portable darkroom that he brought along with him in a horse drawn cart. Also, unlike most prints from that time that exist from second or third generation copies, his 10-by-13 inch glass-plate negatives still exist today. They were preserved by the American Geographical Society of New York. Much of the knowledge that we have of the first railroad is from Durant's sudden impulse to hire a photographer to document the railroad.
Famous Picture
This is one of the most famous pictures in American history. It was taken by Andrew J Russell.

      The transcontinental railroad had many effects on the nation. One of the positive effects was that it was now much easier to transport people and goods from east to west. This provided more products available in both the east and the west. Also, more people could immigrate to the West. Soldiers could be transported easier. It also helped to settle the West. However, there were also negative effects. It was now easy to get to the West and thousands of settlers moved to the West. Also, the railroad brought the last crushing blow to the Native Americans. Their land was now accessible for settlement. More people meant that they would be forced onto small reservations or killed. The tracks served as a physical reminder to the Native Americans that the white men were coming.

Click to Enlarge Map
 
 

Transcontinental Links

 
Plans for the Railroad By Civil Engineer Theodore Judah
Extensive Photo Gallery by Andrew J Russell (Impressive)
Backpack or bike the Transcontinental Railroad Scenic Backroad Corridor
Visit Golden Spike National Historic Site
Route of Transcontinental Railroad

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