Composite image. Left photo shows the front of the replica Central Pacific locomotive, Jupiter, at Golden Spike National Historic Park, Promontory, Utah, Aug. 10, 2013 | Photo courtesy of Justin Philamalee, St. George News. Right photo shows the crowds gathering around the Jupiter and 119 for the joining of the rails ceremony, Promontory Summit, Utah, May 10, 1869 | Photo courtesy of Utah State Historical Society, St. George News FEATURE — “Are we there yet?” Just like Bart Simpson, that’s what many parents might hear from their children as they drive out to Promontory Summit in Box Elder County just north of the Great Salt Lake to see the spot where the first transcontinental railroad became reality on May 10, 1869. To many, “the middle of nowhere” seems a perfect description of this remote area. Without the important event that transpired there, that’s all it would be and practically no one would visit. Instead, it’s an extremely significant spot where hordes of history buffs have descended to witness reenactments or other festivities marking the beginning of the golden age of transportation in the United States. It is easily at the top of the list of events with major national significance and repercussions that happened in Utah. And just as modern-day children (and even adults sometimes) say or think that oft-heard impatient refrain, the top brass down to the graders and track layers of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific probably thought the same thing as they built the grand iron rail that linked the nation from sea to sea a century and a half ago: “Are we there yet?” The race to Promontory Railroads began to emerge in the Eastern half of the U.S. in the 1830s, then started to grow exponentially when the realization of their potential power soaked in. With that realization, talk of a rail line that would span the width of the continent began to gain traction. One of the main motivations for building a transcontinental railroad was the California Gold Rush, Southern Utah University history professor Laura June Davis said. “The U.S. government wanted to bridge the gap between the rising populations of the West with the more established East,” Davis explained. “The process of planning a transcontinental railroad, selecting a route and actually building it took a long time, especially as politicians could not agree on a route.” Surprisingly, the Civil War sped up the process of building the railroad, Davis noted, because predominantly northern legislatures could approve a route and pass land grant acts to aid the railroads without facing objections from their southern counterparts. Not surprisingly, that was the reason a southern route through more favorable terrain and weather was not built first. The prospect of a railroad from coast to coast excited one young engineer in California, Theodore Judah, who took on the task of surveying a likely route through the Sierra Nevadas. He preached the railroad gospel to any who would listen, convincing a group of Sacramento businessmen and shopkeepers to invest in his operation, which led to the incorporation of the Central Pacific Railroad with Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington, Mark Hopkins and eventually Charles Crocker as major backers. Unfortunately, however, Judah butted heads with these men and sought the help of Eastern investors, namely Cornelius Vanderbilt, instead. While traveling to court this financial backing, Judah contracted yellow fever in Panama and died, becoming an oft-forgotten driving force of the first transcontinental railroad. Government subsidies became a major impetus for the rail line’s construction by means of the Pacific Railroad Act President Abraham Lincoln signed into law in 1862 in the midst of the Civil War. The act would give the two future competing railroad companies land grants (which ended up being larger than the land area of Texas) and an established amount of money per mile of track they laid. For instance, the government provided the companies 30-year loans based on the terrain encountered, including up to $48,000 per mile across high mountains, up to $32,000 per mile across the isolated Great Basin and up to $16,000 per mile across the flat plains. The quest to gain the most from the government’s generosity started what would become a race across the continent between two newly formed railroad companies, the Central Pacific, starting from Sacramento in January 1863 and the Union Pacific, initiating its line from Omaha, Nebraska, in December of that same year. The head start was necessary for the Central Pacific since the Union Pacific had the easier job, traversing the great plains and, in general, less mountainous terrain while the Central Pacific fought against the imposing Sierra Nevadas. Instead of formidable mountains, one of the Union Pacific’s construction challenges was hostile Native Americans. As prominent Latter-day Saint historian Leonard Arrington wrote in an article titled “The Railroad and the West” in the Winter 1969 issue of the Utah Historical Quarterly, “men worked near stacks of carbines held in readiness to cope with surprise attacks by Indians who objected to this symbol of permanent trespass upon their hunting ground.” In contrast, the Central Pacific did not encounter such clashes, as its directors insisted that the indigenous people be allowed to ride. “We gave the old chiefs a pass each, good on the passenger cars,” Central Pacific director Huntington recalled, as quoted by Arrington, “and we told our men to let the common Indians ride on the freight cars whenever they saw fit.” Due to these harsh conditions and the difficult work, the Central Pacific started hiring Chinese laborers, who proved integral in fulfilling the massive undertaking. By 1867, the Central Pacific employed approximately 11,000 Chinese laborers. With the Chinese contingent in the workforce, construction went faster. It was Union Pacific Director Charles Crocker who advocated the idea of employing the Chinese, largely due to his experience with a faithful Chinese servant. Crocker, however, faced resistance, especially from the work superintendent, J. H. Strobridge. Crocker insisted that if the Chinese built the Great Wall of China, they could surely build a railroad. Strobridge acquiesced after a series of trials demonstrating the Chinese to be more than fit for the job. He later complemented the workers from the Far East, saying, “they learn quickly, do not fight, have no strikes that amount to anything and are very clean in their habits,” as quoted in a story by George Kraus in the Winter 1969 issue of the Utah Historical Quarterly. Despite anti-Chinese sentiment of the time, many came forward to compliment the Chinese, including Central Pacific President Leland Stanford and Union Pacific Chief Engineer Grenville Dodge, who were both pleased at their hard work and few complaints. The three main jobs for workers toiling on the first transcontinental railroad were tunnelers, graders and track layers. Tunnelers set and blasted dynamite to dig tunnels through the mountains, graders shaped the continuous, level, raised bed for the railway and track layers installed the ties and the track. The Central Pacific tunnelers faced the grueling job of blasting through the Sierra Nevada’s solid granite walls, sometimes only managing 8 inches per day in the worst winter conditions. Some historians later suggested that the Central Pacific could have built the line cheaper and faster if it had ceased construction during the winter. A friend of Crocker’s concluded that had speed not been a factor in building the railroad, the costs of building it could have been reduced by 70%. Many historians agree that if both companies were not racing to collect government subsidies, the quality of construction would have been much better. Even after the meeting of the two rail lines at Promontory, building crews stayed on the payroll to complete repairs on track laid too hastily. In contrast, their Union Pacific counterparts encountered soft clay rock and sandstone in the mountains and canyons of Wyoming and Utah. In that unstable environment, cave-ins were inevitable, which meant every inch of the tunnel had to be reinforced with timbers as blasting continued. The track layers made an anvil chorus as they worked industriously putting down ties then iron rails on top of them.<doc-sep>(Photo courtesy Stewart Library, Special Collections) Men who worked on the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869 ride on a float in 1919 during a parade in Ogden to mark the 50th anniversary of the completion of the transcontinental railroad. Photographs taken during the parade are featured in "Spike 50: Golden Spike Parade in 1919,” a free exhibit at Union Station, 2501 Wall Ave., Ogden, through May 31. The image is indelible — the meeting of the Central Pacific No. 119 and Union Pacific 60, aka The Jupiter, at Promontory Summit in 1869. It was a defining moment in our nation’s history. Now, as we mark the 150th anniversary, the transcontinental railway offers up lessons for those who listen and serves as an inspiration for what we could hope to achieve. On the simplest level, the driving of the “Golden Spike” unified a nation — literally and figuratively — that, just a few short years outside of the Civil War, was far more divided than we can comprehend today. Its completion was marked with celebrations from coast to coast. The hammers meant to drive the final spike were outfitted with wires that would register the event via telegraph to Omaha and Sacramento, but the rail boss who swung the hammer missed. It turns out, swinging those hammers wasn’t easy. But the real spike was eventually driven into the ground. Like so much of our nation — then and now — the railroad was built by migrant laborers unwanted in much of the country except for their ability to work. Robert Gehrke It was an amalgamation of the Chinese migrants, Irish who escaped famine, newly freed slaves and Latter-day Saints driven West to flee religious persecution who laid the 1,800 miles of track, humble people of modest means willing to do backbreaking labor. The Chinese workers were paid about two-thirds what the Irish rail workers received and were often tasked with the most dangerous jobs, like being lowered in baskets to blow holes in the sides of the mountains. By most estimates, a thousand people were killed in the process, and those who survived were denied U.S. citizenship. In addition to the iconic photograph of the trains meeting at Promontory, celebrants hoisting champagne bottles (which were cropped out of some later prints of the photo), there is another image. This is one of eight Chinese railroad workers laying the last rails to complete the line moments before the Golden Spike ceremony. They were there. They were just not seen. It is vital, said Max Chang, a board member of the Golden Spike Foundation, to “widen the lens” of history. Chang was recently invited to tell the story of these workers to a class of mostly Latin American and South American students. The teacher, he said, felt like the students needed to hear the story “to understand that other groups have gone before them and faced similar situations.” Racial prejudice and mistreatment weren’t the only tarnish on the Golden Spike. The project was plagued by corruption and self-dealing. The coming of the railroad led to the eradication of the bison and hastened the conquering of the Plains Indian tribes. Like so much of our history, the railroad’s story needs to be understood with context and nuance. The threads that weave their way through the history of the railroad across 150 years are relevant today. We are, it seems sometimes, a hopelessly divided nation, grappling — then as now — with inequality and challenges. Still, we have it in ourselves to accomplish remarkable things. A century after the completion of the transcontinental railroad, the nation came together to celebrate again, this time sending a man to the moon. “That day we didn’t care what political party we were, we didn’t care what race we were or gender,” Chang said. “We didn’t care because we all did this together.” There is inspiration in those grand achievements and a challenge to keep dreaming, because our divisions fall away when we can unite behind a great purpose. Then anything becomes possible. “The greatness of America is never behind us,” Chang said. “It’s always ahead.” So what is the next impossible thing we will accomplish?<doc-sep>“Dot, Dot, Dot. Done!” That message, sent 150 years ago Friday by telegrapher W.N. Shilling from Promontory Summit, Utah, set off celebrations as the driving of the Golden Spike completed the Transcontinental Railroad. On Friday, at the Golden Spike National Historical Park at Promontory Summit, a reenactor keyed the same message. A crowd of thousands gathered to mark the most famous moment in American railroading and one of the seminal events in U.S. history, making May 10, 1869, a date to remember. The three dots represented the final strikes of the silver maul tapping in the last spike. “Done” meant the completion of the Pacific Railway, linking Sacramento and Omaha, Neb., 1,776 miles, decades in the planning and six years in the making. Celebrate the transcontinental railroad on a weekend escape in Utah » Advertisement (Los Angeles Times) The Central Pacific’s Jupiter from the west and Union Pacific’s No. 119 from the east, both steam locomotives, faced off. On hand again Thursday were Jupiter and 119, this time replicas of the originals, built for the 110th anniversary in 1972. They are tiny by newer standards, each weighing about 60 tons loaded with coal (No. 119) or wood (Jupiter), beautifully ornate, as were the originals. Their whistles sang and bells rang to mark the beginning of the main ceremony Bands played, a children’s choir sang, and the Postal Service sold first-day-of-issue stamps commemorating the event. Among the dignitaries ange when confirmedwere Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao, Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt, Utah Gov. Gary R. Herbert and Lance Fritz, Union Pacific’s chairman, president, and chief executive. Reenacted figures included Central Pacific’s Leland Stanford, Union Pacific’s Dr. Thomas Durant and Gen. Grenville Dodge. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jon Meacham was the keynote speaker. The national anthem, bells, cannons and a flyover marked the ceremony’s culmination. Advertisement Hello, Big Boy The Big Boy No. 4014 rolls out of a Union Pacific restoration shop at the Cheyenne, Wyo., Depot Museum on May 4. (P. Solomon Banda / Associated Press) Remember the Chinese immigrants who built America’s first transcontinental railroad » 150 years ago, they were working on the railroad: La Mesan organizes celebration of Chinese laborers’ record-setting day » Golden Spike festivities had gotten off to a spectacular start six days earlier and 460 miles east in Cheyenne, Wyo., with the christening of No. 4014, one of 25 Big Boys, Union Pacific’s largest and best-known steam locomotives and with a connection to Southern California. Advertisement On a sunny Saturday morning, the massive locomotive, gleaming black, fresh from the restoration shop where it had spent more than two years, was wreathed in steam as it rolled to a stop in front of the depot. That depot is now a museum, and 2,000 spectators had bought tickets to be there and cheer every blast of 4014’s melodious whistle. As many as 5,000 people gathered in Laramie, Wyo., the first stop on the locomotive’s five-day journey to Ogden, Utah, and thousands more came to trackside all along the route. This behemoth, built in 1941 for Union Pacific, remained in service until 1959. So famous was the Big Boy that seven survive in parks and museums, but only No. 4014 has steam in its belly. It had spent its retirement on display at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds in Pomona until Union Pacific brought it home in 2014. Advertisement “Good morning, steam-town,” said Lance Fritz, Union Pacific’s head, in opening the ceremony. “We’re here to celebrate the Big Boy and our railroad’s long relation with Cheyenne.” Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon also spoke, as did Cheyenne Mayor Marian Orr, who said the previous evening felt like Christmas Eve. Fritz’s wife, Julie, helped him break a bottle of Champagne over 4014’s coupler. With Ed Dickens, head of the nine-member Steam Crew that performed the restoration, at the throttle, the Big Boy began its journey to Ogden, double-headed with another preserved Union Pacific steam engine, No. 844 — smaller than No. 4014 but still imposing. Dickens played Big Boy’s whistle like an orchestra wherever spectators clustered. A miles-long motorcade of chasers jammed the highways. After the celebration Advertisement Once the celebratory crowds have left Promontory Summit, the Golden Spike National Historic Park will return to its normal routines, with plenty to see and do. In season, the two locomotives operate under steam. The re-enactors perform on summer Saturdays and holidays. The visitor center brings the long-ago triumph of the Golden Spike alive, with a video and displays of the primitive tools and light, flimsy rail that hastened this fragile railway across the West. There’s a replica of the golden spike; the original is normally at the Stanford University Art Museum.. Don’t miss the chance to drive the Central Pacific’s abandoned right-of-way on the West and East Grade Auto Tours. Although I love the visitor center and the steam locomotives, a lonely drive along the old right-of-way brings me closer to an understanding of the vast, harsh, emptiness that faced the laborers. In their way, they were the heroes of the Golden Spike. Advertisement IF YOU GO The Golden Spike National Historic Park is 32 miles west of Brigham City, Utah, which is 60 miles north of Salt Lake City on Interstate 15. The visitor center, museum, and bookstore are open year round (closed Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day) from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Locomotive steam demonstrations run from May 1 through mid-October, and guided tours of the locomotives in the engine house are an excellent alternative during the balance of the year. Reenactments of the Last Spike Ceremony take place on Saturdays and holidays from Memorial Day through Labor Day, and the auto tours are available year round. Advertisement Info: Golden Spike National Historical Park, (435) 471-2209 The Big Boy will operate occasional trips in the future, and the Union Pacific Rail Car will also tour around Union Pacific’s 23-state system. For details when they become available: Union Pacific Heritage Steam. travel@latimes.com @latimestravel<doc-sep>
(Photo courtesy of the Union Pacific Railroad Museum) This image by American photographer Andrew J. Russell is titled "East and West Shaking Hands at laying of last rail" and shows the celebration of the 1869 completion of the intercontinental railroad. It appears in the new exhibit "The Race to Promontory: The Transcontinental Railroad and the American West" running Feb. 1–May 26, 2019, at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. Completing the transcontinental railroad 150 years ago at Promontory Summit forever changed Utah and the nation — driving radical transformation in everything from the economy to the environment, from settlement to the culture. “The changes were sweeping and pivotal,” said Brigham Young University history professor Brian Cannon. Maybe Americans on May 10, 1869, excitedly sensed the magnitude of the shifts coming. Historian Stephen Ambrose said more cannons were likely fired that day in celebration nationally than ever took part in the battle of Gettysburg — including 220 in San Francisco and 100 in Washington, D.C. Chicago threw the parade of the century — seven miles long, with tens of thousands participating. The Tabernacle in downtown Salt Lake City was packed with 7,000 celebrating people. Cities nationwide closed businesses to await the news via telegraph and to erupt in jubilation. “Next to winning the Civil War and abolishing slavery, building the transcontinental railroad … was the greatest achievement of the American people in the 19th century,” Ambrose wrote in his book “Nothing Like It In the World.” The Salt Lake Tribune searched writings of historians — and interviewed several modern ones — to look for ways that the railroad changed the world and the state. Here are the top 12: • Immigration became faster, easier, cheaper and safer. Before the railroad, “It took about three months to come to Utah by wagon. The train cut that down to a week” or less, Thomas Alexander, an emeritus BYU history professor, said in an interview. Cannon added that, “You could get all the way from Omaha to Salt Lake City in about 30-31 hours if everything worked correctly.” The trip also was safer and cheaper. “It was actually more expensive to travel by wagon than by train,” Alexander said. And death was common in wagon trains from cholera, dysentery and other illnesses — but not on trains. The cost to cross the Plains by wagon was about $1,000. A week after the Golden Spike completed the railroad, people could travel from New York to San Francisco for $150, first class (with sleeping cars) and $70 for emigrant class. Tribune file photo This 1936 photo shows a participants in a Mormon Pioneer wagon train reenactment. The Golden Spike officially ended the pioneer era. Cannon notes people can join such pioneer heritage groups as the Daughters of Utah Pioneers only if their ancestors immigrated before 1869. • It literally changed the sense of time and space. Brad Westwood, senior public historian at the Utah Division of History, noted that for thousands of years, people could travel no faster on land than a horse could carry them. The train changed that in a generation — and, in 1883, would even lead to creating standard time zones to aid train schedules (instead of every city figuring that noon was when the sun hit its highest point in the sky there). “The sense of time and space changed,” he said, including how far people figured they could easily travel, send their goods or buy things. “We have Amazon Prime now that delivers things in 24 hours. People had a version of that in the 19th century,” where people could buy most consumer goods from catalog companies that delivered via rail. FILE - In an undated file photo, Ruth Parrington, librarian in the art department of the Chicago Public Library, studies early Sears Roebuck catalogs in the library's collection, in Chicago. The catalog Parrington is holding features women's fashion from 1902. Sears, a back-to-school shopping destination for generations of kids and the place newlyweds went to choose appliances, said Tuesday, March 21, 2017, that after years of losing money that there is "substantial doubt" it will be able to keep its doors open. (AP Photo/File) Homemade pioneer furniture and clothing started disappearing, replaced by factory goods. The market for farm products became national instead of local. That included creation of many middleman companies “that made their money by basically taking your crop, putting it in storage bins and transporting it when needed,” he said.