Hysterical Journey to Historic Places

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THE GOLDEN SPIKE

A transcontinental railroad had been sought in America since the California Gold Rush in 1849. Congress, however, could do nothing but dither over the route. The southern states favored an all season route through Texas, New Mexico and Arizona to Los Angeles. Congress went so far as to purchase more land in Northern Mexico to enable that route. The northerners opposed it because they were afraid slavery would expand to California. Several potential routes were surveyed farther north, but the Southerners opposed every one of them. Uncle Abe Lincoln was a staunch supporter of the transcontinental railroad and as soon as the southern senators left the union an authorization bill was passed for construction of the line from Omaha up the Platte River, across the Rockies, and on through the sagebrush wastes to California. It was to be called the Union Pacific Railroad. Construction could not begin, however, until the Civil War ended, come what may. The war carried a higher priority for manpower, resources, and funding. Part of the bill authorized another line beginning in Sacramento and passing over the formidable Sierra Nevada Mountains. It was to be called the Central Pacific. After the war both roads started building at about the same time.

San Francisco already had port facilities and the Central Pacific should have started from there, but investors could not be found there who were foolish enough to assume the capital risk involved in constructing such a huge project. Sacramento had a band of investors headed by a local merchant named Collis Huntington, but they needed to expand and improve port facilities there before construction could commence. Everything involved in the construction of the Central Pacific had to come by sea around Cape Horn, including the locomotives, rails, hammers, and spikes. The government would not allow a construction subsidy until the investors could lay the first thirty miles of track. The road had to advance as far as Auburn before the federal subsidy kicked in. Between Newcastle and Auburn the road needed to pass through a place called Bloomer’s Cut and the grade went through bedrock there. The task defeated the sturdy Irishmen working with hand tools. In a drastic measure the workers were replaced with Chinese who were given black powder. The humble Chinamen reached Auburn in short order after making another huge cut by the city park. That cut provided the fill dirt needed to get past the fairgrounds. From Auburn thousands of Chinese shoved the road into the mountains.

After the war the country was thrown into a deep economic recession. War production suddenly ceased and we had hundreds of thousands of unemployed soldiers needing work. Building the railroad was what brought us back to solvency. Domestic steel production soared, and so did manufacturing, and mining, and shipping. One of the problems faced by the Union Pacific was that the road passed through country where there were very few trees. Timber needed for rail ties, bridges, trestles, plus station, platform, warehouse, and shop construction needs came upriver from logging operations and mills in Arkansas. Just as everything used by the Central Pacific came by boat to Sacramento, everything used by the Union Pacific came by boat to Omaha. Rail service from the east terminated at Council Bluffs, IA, which was just across the Missouri River from Omaha, but a railroad bridge crossing there was not built until 1872. The original authorization bill passed in 1862 was amended as needed. It originally only authorized construction of the Central Pacific as far as the state boundary with Nevada. That stricture was removed to promote fair competition between the two railroads. When it went in to effect the race was on see who could lay rails the fastest. The incentive that sped construction was that for each mile of track laid the railroad got a section of free government land adjoining the tracks in checkerboard pattern. Another important provision that was added to the authorization bill allowed the Kansas Pacific to build from the Mississippi River westward across Kansas to Denver. It was intended that a competing railroad would prevent a monopoly by the Union Pacific. It was a good idea, but it failed to consider the depths of corruption that the Union Pacific directors were capable of. The Union Pacific was headed by a couple of old crooks named Tom Durant and Oakes Ames. Durant realized from the beginning that there was more money to be stolen from the construction of the railroad than there ever would be from its operation. As director Durant purchased a company named the Pennsylvania Fiscal Agency from another old crook named Duff Green. He renamed that company Credit Mobilier and it became the contracting agency for all rail construction. It stole millions from the federal treasury as the road went forward. Durant was so obviously corrupt that he had to be removed from the board of directors. He owned so much stock in the railroad though that he could not be removed entirely and became chief operating officer and head thief. He was replaced as director of the Union Pacific by Oakes Ames, who took over responsibility for bribing Congressmen with the huge profits generated by Credit Mobilier. Construction out of Omaha got off to slow start in the spring of 1866 and nearly foundered under its own ponderous weight until Grenville Dodge was put in as chief engineer. He got the road moving and kept it moving and the crooks were all happy. The Cheyenne and Sioux people, however, were less happy and attacked isolated crews when the chance to do so presented minimal risk. The Cheyenne were still mad about Sand Creek, and the Sioux were mad about flagrant intrusion into their homeland. The army sent Pawnee Scouts to protect the road. When the road reached Cheyenne a junction was put in for later connection to Denver. Durant decided to call the new station there Cheyenne because he thought he had built beyond the range of their wrath. He mostly had, except that repair crews coming along behind were still at peril. To build a railroad the survey and staking crews go out first in small parties and they work far in advance. The graders come next, in larger crews, to make sure the road bed is flat, and that any needed bridges, culverts, and trestles are built. The track crews come next. The ties go down first, followed at regular intervals on the ties with steel plates called feet. The tracks go down atop the feet, and then the gandy dancers come along with pry bars to make the tracks parallel. Connectors are then bolted in place to secure one section of rail to the next. Finally spiking crews drive the spikes home through holes in the feet. Spikes hold the rails in place on the ties. Once that process is set in motion it runs along smoothly and needn’t stop. Telegraph crews come along behind to set poles and string wires. All railroads had telegraph communication. By the time construction stopped for the winter in 1868 the road had been built as far west as a place called Bear River City near Evanston, WY. Durant stopped paying the construction crews beyond Rawlins. He simply stole those funds and left the workers stranded in the middle of nowhere with no pay. In the spring Mormon workers came out to take over and they built the road to Promontory Summit but, of course, Durant never paid them either.



The Central Pacific was nowhere near as corrupt and they had no Indians to fight but building over the mountains was an onerous task. The surveyors finally found a route over Donner Pass, where the cannibals once lived and on down the Truckee River to Nevada. The humble Chinamen scurried forward with their black powder and opium pipes. They trestled deep gorges drove tunnels through granite mountains, switched back upon themselves and struggled through deep snow. Sometimes they tunneled through the snow too. The Central Pacific worked on through the winters when work on the Union Pacific halted during the winters. During those work stoppages the Union Pacific road crews built towns like North Platte, Cheyenne, Laramie, and Rawlins. At North Platte an odd assortment of saloons, brothels, and gambling hells popped up. In the spring when the road went forward the whiskey drummers, harpies, and gamblers went forward too. The bustling end of track communities became known as Hell on Wheels. The Central Pacific did not have them. As the road drove farther up the hill the granite got more resistant to black powder. Near Donner Summit a tunnel 1659 feet long needed to be blasted through the granite. It was slow going because the black powder just blew back on itself. The road engineers, Clement and Judah, tried the novel approach of burrowing in an air vent to the middle of the tunnel and sending their Chinamen down it to work the tunnel from the inside out. It didn’t solve the problem and they finally took the drastic measure of replacing the use of black powder with nitroglycerin. Nitro was new-fangled stuff that had not been tested in large scale use. It was very unstable and could not be shipped in so it had to be manufactured on site. Turns out it worked very well and few Chinamen blew themselves up with it. On June 18, 1868 the tunnel was finally completed. In the meantime the survey and grading crews had been working all across Nevada. The road built pretty quickly down the east side of the mountains. When it reached the sage brush wastes in Nevada the road shot forward sometimes as much as 20 miles per day. Durant pushed his Irishmen like a demon but they had become a recalcitrant bunch when their pay stopped. He was lucky to get eight miles a day out of them. The Union Pacific had surveyed, staked, and graded their route as far west as Wells, NV and the Central Pacific had surveyed, staked and graded their route as far east as Ogden, UT. Congress decreed that the lines meet at a place called Promontory Summit. Of all the mighty things that the country accomplished completion of the transcontinental railroad was by far the mightiest. It opened up rapid commerce and communication from sea to shining sea. Settlement had already begun. The completion ceremony at Promontory Summit was a very big deal. Durant was there with his gang of thieves. Leland Stanford was there with his pals. They had brought a special laurel wood tie from California and a special golden spike as the final spike driven. Stanford drove it in to close the ceremony with a special silver hammer. Of course, the Golden Spike was replaced with an ordinary spike before Durant could steal it. The Golden Spike is on display in the museum at Stanford University.

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Photos

GOLDEN SPIKE REENACTORS
Reenactment ceremonies go forth at the Golden Spike Historic Site all summer long.

POUND IT IN HERE
The mainline no longer goes through here. The original route passed around sharp curves and down a steep grade that caused many derailments. It was eventually routed on a long trestle across the Great Salt Lake that cut 43 miles off the old route. During WWII the old rails were pulled up and used in the war effort.

TIE CART
Dunno which road first thought of using these carts, but they were a good idea and moved the road forward more quickly.

TRIBUTE TO THE CHINAMEN
You do not often see recognition given to the Chinese for the hard work they did on behalf of our country.