Transcontinental Railroad...Building

Railroads had become commonplace thanks to those hardworking dreamers who didn't give up. By 1852, America had 9,000 miles of track mostly in the North. The South had a few such as the B&O and the South Carolina Railroad. By contast, England only had 6,500 miles of tracks. Many of the Northern lines competed for the same business and the New York Central laid its tracks right alongside those of the Pennsylvania Railroad. The Pennsy's tracks approached the west by way of Buffalo, NY along the eastern edge of Lake Erie and then southwest. Eventually, the NY Central realized that it did not make sense and in the 1860s joined with the Pennsylvania to become the Penn Central. ²

"The once pastoral landscape of America, quiet and undisturbed, was now pierced by the sight and sound of a mechanical marvel, the locomotive and its trailing cars... wherever tracks were hammered down, business was sure to follow. Sometimes whole towns were planned around a railroad track...buildings that had once been inns and taverns catering to the stagecoach trade became rail depots...a new social caste system was spreading in the wake of the railroad. Now there was a 'right side' and a 'wrong side' of the tracks. The right and wrong side of the tracks was determined by which way the wind blew the sooty, black engine smoke." ³   The wrong side referred to where the smoke was thickest. That became the cheap rent side, where factories and mills were built. This is where the poor and the debtors lived. The right side was where the churches and expensive shops were located, and where the wealthier people lived. ³

By 1858, ten railroads were converging on the "hub," Chicago. It was now time to venture across the Mississippi. Henry Farnam and Thomas Durant, owners of the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad hoped to build another railroad, the Mississippi and Missouri, running 298 miles across Iowa from Davenport to Council Bluffs. Then they would further extend their line into Nebraska, across the Missouri River. Eventually, they hoped, their line would extend all the way to the Pacific Coast. They realized that, although they could build a railroad to a river, they hadn't yet figured out how to get it across the river. At that time, there were no bridges crossing either river and they had the formidable task of building one strong enough to bear the load of an locomotive, its cars and its payload. ³

Although they tried hard to get government grants and permits to build their bridge, they met fierce opposition from owners of the riverboats who feared the inevitable competition. "Urged by southern steamboat owners, southern politicians in Washington tried to prevent the bridge's construction." ³   Construction was completed in April 1856 and the first train made its way across the Mississippi. However, two weeks later, a steamboat crashed into a pier of the bridge and exploded. The owners of the boat sued the railroad. Abraham Lincoln, a young lawyer, defended the railroad, armed with evidence prepared by an engineer, Robert E. Lee, showing that there was no significant current at the time of the accident and that the steamboat was at fault. But an Iowa court found the builders of the bridge liable and ordered the removal of the bridge. This decision was later overturned by the Supreme Court. In a key decision, the Supreme Court ruled that "Railroads could bridge rivers." ⁴

They once worked together!

Abraham Lincoln, 1857 ³
Robert E. Lee, 1865 ³

In the early 1850s, Congress had called for surveys to be done for the purpose of determining the feasibility of traversing the entire continent by rail. Four routes between Canada and Mexico were found, but a bigger problem ensued. Problems had been brewing for a long time between the North and the South, and it was only a matter of time before the Civil War would descend upon the continent. For four years, the railroads already in existence bore a great burden, hauling troops and supplies to the battlefields. The North, having more railroads than the South, had the advantage. "The railroad had gone to war, and war would never be the same again. 'If the Southern States had seceded in 1832, when South Carolina was threatening to do so, nothing could have stopped them,' said Franklin Garrett of the Atlanta Historical Society. 'It was largely the railroad that enabled the North to win the war.'" ⁴   Each side did their share of destroying each other's rail lines. As soon as one could be rebuilt, another would be destroyed.

Railroad ruins at Manassas Junction, 1862
Van Pelt Library
University of Pennsylvania
http://www.upenn.edu/

Finally, on April 9, 1865 the Southern leader, General Robert E. Lee, surrendered at Appomattox, Virginia and a few days later, President Lincoln was assassinated. The war was over and the country now faced the task of rebuilding itself. It was the B&O Railroad that brought the president's body along its funeral route, across the country to its final resting place in Springfield, Illinois. "The train proceeded at hardly more than 20 miles per hour to Baltimore, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, New York, Albany, Buffalo, Columbus, Indianapolis and Chicago... the train halted briefly along the carefully planned 1,700 mile route to allow people from countless towns and villages to pay their final tribute. It was the largest outpouring of grief America had ever known." ³

The surveys completed years earlier showed that a railroad could follow any one of the four routes, but that the 32nd parallel route was the least expensive. The Southern Pacific Railroad was subsequently built along this parallel. The southern routes were objectionable to northern politicians and the northern routes were objectionable to the southern politicians, but the surveys could not, of course, resolve these issues.

With the war over, the North and South were no longer divided, but the country was still split in half, east and west. The east coast had the advantage of many more years of development and it was time for the west coast to catch up economically as well as developmentally. The Northeast, virtually unharmed by the war, was criss-crossed by railroads. Passengers as well as freight were moving at faster speeds and greater distances than just a decade before. Many of the rail lines interconnected and those in the Midwest and along the Great Lakes would be incorporated into the lines owned by the B&O, New York Central and the Pennsylvania.

The South also had a few railroads, but they were not as prevalent as those of the North. Between Council Bluffs, Iowa and the Pacific coast (the goal of the coming transcontinental railroad) lay the snowcapped rugged mountains of the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada, seemingly endless plains and prairies, wind-whipped canyons, wild rivers, and desert heat. Adding to the problems were the wild cattle, horses and buffalo, along with the dilemma of what to do about the Native Americans, gunslinging robbers and hard-driving cattlemen. Oregon gold and Nevada silver has just been discovered. Yet there was no public transportation and traveling was extremely difficult. ³

Theodore Judah, a civil engineer from Connecticut, was instrumental in getting the plans for the new transcontinental railroad in motion. He had come to California in 1854 to guild the 21-mile railway for a mine operator. He was one of the dreamers of the time, but he knew what he was talking about, having had years of experience in the rail industry. He was taken seriously. ²   Hired to survey the Sierra Nevada for a proposed wagon road from Sacramento to the Nevada silver mines, he insisted on a railroad instead. Although the wagon company was not interested, he pursued this on his own. With a pharmacist friend, Doc Strong, who had already surveyed a passage along the Truckee River, Judah wrote The Articles of Association of the Central Pacific Railroad of California. ^2,3

Theodore Judah ³

Judah spoke everywhere he could to promote his ideas in order to raise much needed capital. He eventually made a proposal to a number of wealthy businessmen from Sacramento. Reasoning that since silver had been discovered in Nevada, they would want to build a railroad linking Sacramento with Nevada and Virginia City. Known together as "The Big Four," Leland Stanford (later to become president of the railroad and governor of California); Collis P. Huntingdon; Mark Hopkins and Charles Crocker, they formed a partnership with Theodore Judah by supplying the money needed to build his railroad to Virginia City. ^2,3,8

"The Big Four"

Leland Stanford ³
Collis Huntingdon ³
Mark Hopkins ³
Charles Crocker³

Before the Civil War interfered with his plans, Judah had managed to build as far as the Nevada mines. But he never gave up the idea of going as far east as Omaha, where he planned his line to meet up with an already existing line, thus creating the first transcontinental railroad. No one would listen to him. Fearing the loss of business he was discredited by the boat operators and nicknamed "Crazy Judah." ³

Due in large part to Judah's lobbying, Congress passed and President Lincoln signed the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862. With the Civil War still going on, the Southern legislators had left the Congress, freeing up the Northerners to decide the route the Transcontinental Railroad would take. "It chartered the Union Pacific Railroad, and provided for it to build westward from the Missouri River in Nebraska to a meeting with the Central Pacific reaching eastward from Sacramento. It also granted the two railroads 10 square miles of public land (later increased to twenty) for every mile of track laid, and loans in Government bonds of $16,000 to $48,000 per mile, depending on the topography." ⁴

Unfortunately, Judah never got to realize his dream. He had suffered a major differences with his "Big Four" partners over money and charges of fraud. They gave him $100,000 for his share of the railroad. On a trip back east to New York to raise money to buy them out, he contracted Yellow Fever and died. ⁸  Ironically, he was heading east on the first railroad connecting the oceans, built by Americans across Panama. ⁴

Back east, the Union Pacific was being financed by a construction company called "Credit Mobilier" and headed up by Dr. Thomas C. Durant. The engineer designing the railroad gave Durant a price tag of 3 million dollars for the first 100 miles. Durant then gave a contract to Credit Mobilier for 5 million dollars while "holding the company only to the original 3 million dollar specifications." When the engineer resigned in protest, Maj. General Grenville M. Dodge was recruited from the U.S. Army to replace him. Greed and corruption continued with a few key people becoming quite wealthy at the expense of the Union Pacific. ²

Thomas Durant
University of Iowa
http://www.uiowa.edu

The financial wrangling of the Central Pacific was also quite questionable, but their books were never reviewed. Huntingdon claimed they had been destroyed when the construction company disbanded. "The investigators concluded, nevertheless, that the Big Four had benefited excessively." ⁴

"It took six years to build the Transcontinental Railroad between Omaha, NE and Sacramento, CA. None of it was easy. Roadbeds had to be carved out of the rugged mountains at dizzying heights and angles. Tunnels had to be blasted through those mountains. Crude wooden, tunnel-like "snowsheds" had to be built to protect the tracks, trains and work crews from gigantic snowslides and drifts. Many Central Pacific laborers lived in these windy, frigid snowsheds as the difficult work went on. Throughout the continuing struggle, men died. They died of disease, of the cold, by accident, from bullets, and from tomahawk wounds." ³

Inside a Snowshed ³

During the building of the Transcontinental Railroad, more than men died. Entire herds of bison were decimated. The workers and travelers used them as "sport" leaving the carcasses to rot. The bison had been shot from moving trains. Unlike the Indians, who did not waste any part of the buffalo, the white men merely slaughtered because "they could." ² The Souix and Cheyenne warriors attacked the "fire road" and the U.S. Army retaliated with such leaders as George A. Custer, who was later killed during the Battle of Little Big Horn.

George A. Custer
http://www.garryowen.com/

The point where the two trains would meet was 850 miles west of Omaha and 650 miles northeast of Sacramento. The rail companies brought in immigrants, men from Ireland, Germany, Scandinavia. The Union Pacific also used former slaves and convicts. The Central Pacific employeed Irish immigrants also, but mostly 15,000 Chinese laborers and a few Indians. Racial tensions and killing were not uncommon. Contests to see which line could advance the farthest spurred to Chinese to extend the Central Pacific a record breaking 10 miles in one day. ²

April 28, 1869
Central Pacific laid 10 miles of track in one day
The record has never been broken. ³

"Actually, the construction crews built several miles of track parallel to each other. The federal legislation chartering the transcontinental project had not provided that the tracks join. There was nothing to prevent each line from continuing to build and thus increase the subsidies it might receive from the federal government. Therefore, Congress acted to set the meeting point at Promontory." ¹⁰

Finally, on Monday, May 10, 1869, in a desolate spot in Utah, a place called Promontory, East met West! It was a day of celebration and cermonies.

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