Business Industry | Building Project

Building the Central Pacific Railroad

Credit: Getty Images
Locomotives from the Central Pacific and Union Pacific faced each other as engineers and workers celebrated at the connection ceremony.
The Central Pacific Railroad was constructed during the 1860s to be the western section of the nation's first transcontinental railroad.

For more than six years beginning in 1863, thousands of men labored to build the Central Pacific Railroad. The project required the blasting of nine tunnels through the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Chinese immigrants comprised 80 percent of the railroad workforce in 1868, and they worked in the harshest conditions for less compensation than their white counterparts. On April 28, 1868, work crews were pushed to a record pace when they laid 10 miles of track in one day. A military officer complemented chief engineer Charles Crocker for the efficiency of his operation: "Mr. Crocker, I never saw such organization as that; it was like an army marching over the ground and leaving a track built behind them." On May 10, 1869, the Central Pacific was connected to the Union Pacific at Promontory, Utah, which decreased travel time from the East Coast to California from several months to less than 10 days.

Credit: Thomas Hill/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain
The audience was amused when executives from the railroad companies both missed on their first attempts to hammer the "last spike."

 

Credit: John B. Silvis/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain
Before the 1870s, Central Pacific locomotives were shipped in parts to the West Coast from the East Coast manufacturers.