The First Transcontinental Railroad
Union Pacific, Central Pacific, and the Golden Spike
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The construction involved thousands of Chinese laborers and Irish workers who faced dangerous conditions and low pay. Theodore Judah pioneered the route through the Sierra Nevada mountains, while the companies secured funding through bonds and government support. Both railroads used different track standards and built their lines in challenging terrain.
This book explains how the transcontinental railroad transformed America's economy and landscape. Readers will discover the role of land grants, the impact on Native American tribes, and the corruption surrounding the Crédit Mobilier company. History enthusiasts and civil engineering students will find this account essential reading for understanding one of America's greatest infrastructure projects.
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The first transcontinental railroad changed everything about how people and goods moved across the country. Before it, traveling from coast to coast took months and cost a fortune. With the new rail lines, passengers and freight could cross the nation in just days, at a fraction of the price. This made farming, ranching, and mining profitable in the West—once thought to be the Great American Desert. The railroad didn’t just connect cities; it transformed the entire country, especially the vast, sparsely populated regions that had few rivers to navigate.
Before the transcontinental railroad changed everything, shipping goods across the West was so expensive that a farmer sending corn just two hundred miles to Chicago couldn’t make enough profit to justify the cost. Wagon transport made it impossible for farming, mining, and other industries to thrive. One congressman put it bluntly when he said, “All that land wasn’t worth ten cents until the railroads came.”
In 1803, when the United States acquired the Louisiana Purchase, many believed it would take three centuries to settle. That timeline shrunk to just three decades once railroads arrived. Shipping costs dropped dramatically compared to wagon transport, making it possible to move goods across the continent efficiently. This drop in shipping prices helped transform the Great American Desert into the productive farmland we know today as the great American breadbasket.
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Congress agreed to back the idea, and soon the Department of War took charge of planning the route. From 1853 to 1855, they sent out the Pacific Railroad Surveys, which were a series of expeditions across the American West. These surveys looked for possible paths the railroad could take. A report was made from all the work, describing several routes and filling in a huge amount of information about the land. It covered at least 400,000 square miles, and included details on the region’s natural history, with illustrations of reptiles, amphibians, birds, and mammals.
The report didn’t have the detailed maps needed to figure out how hard or expensive it would be to build a railroad along any of the possible paths. But the survey did give enough information to show that the best route heading south would go below the Gila River, which marks the border with Mexico. This path would pass through what is now mostly empty desert land, and would go through the future areas of Arizona and New Mexico. That finding helped push the United States to complete the Gadsden Purchase.
In 1856, a group in Congress called the Select Committee on the Pacific Railroad and Telegraph released a report that supported a plan for a transcontinental railroad. The committee recommended backing a bill that would build a railway across the country, connecting the eastern states with the Pacific coast. This was part of a larger effort to improve transportation and communication across the United States. The report laid the groundwork for what would become one of the most ambitious construction projects in American history.
The need for building railroads and telegraph lines connecting the Atlantic and Pacific coasts is no longer debated—it's widely accepted. To keep our standing on the Pacific, we must find faster and more direct ways to communicate than what's currently possible through foreign lands.
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The U.S. Congress found itself deeply split over whether the eastern end of the transcontinental railroad should be built in a southern or northern city. Three specific routes were under consideration for this vital project.
One possible route for the transcontinental railroad followed the Missouri River northward through what is now northern Montana into the Oregon Territory. This path was deemed too difficult for construction due to the challenging landscape and heavy snowfall during winter months. The terrain proved unsuitable for laying tracks, making this option impractical for building the line.
One possible route for the railroad followed the Platte River through Nebraska, continuing on to South Pass in Wyoming, where it would trace much of the path of the Oregon Trail. Travelers and planners alike were concerned about the snow that could block the way during winter months. This central path was among the options considered for connecting the eastern and western parts of the country by rail.
A route running through Texas, across the New Mexico Territory and into the Sonora desert was considered for the railroad, linking up with Los Angeles, California. In 1848, surveyors determined that the most suitable path went just below the international boundary between the United States and Mexico. The matter was settled by the Gadsden Purchase, which took place in 1853.
Once the central route was chosen, it became clear that Sacramento should be the western end of the railroad. But there was a lot of debate over where the eastern end should be. Three places along 250 miles of the Missouri River were discussed as possible starting points.
The route from Kansas City, Kansas, to Leavenworth, Kansas, was possible via the Leavenworth, Pawnee and Western Railroad. That railroad was controlled by Thomas Ewing Jr. and later by John C. Frémont.
The route from Council Bluffs, Iowa, to Omaha, Nebraska, was part of an extension planned by Thomas C. Durant, who was connected to the Mississippi and Missouri Railroad and also controlled the Union Pacific Railroad. This path became central to the larger effort to build the transcontinental railroad, with Durant playing a key role in shaping its early development. The line would eventually stretch westward, linking with other tracks and helping to form the foundation of the first transcontinental railroad.
Council Bluffs offered key benefits for the railroad route: it was far north of the Civil War conflict in Missouri, it provided the shortest path to South Pass in Wyoming’s Rockies, and it followed a rich river that would support settlement. In 1857, Durant had hired Abraham Lincoln as an attorney for a bridge project over the Missouri River. Now, with Lincoln in charge of selecting the eastern end of the line, he turned to Durant for advice.
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Theodore Judah was a strong believer in building a railroad along the central route. He worked hard to promote the idea and led the survey for the path through the difficult Sierra Nevada mountains. This area was one of the biggest challenges for the project.
In 1852, Theodore Judah served as chief engineer for the Sacramento Valley Railroad, which was the first railroad built west of the Mississippi River. Even though that line later went bankrupt after the easy gold deposits around Placerville were mined out, Judah remained convinced that a well-funded railroad could travel from Sacramento through the Sierra Nevada mountains, reach the Great Basin, and connect with tracks coming from the East.
In 1856, Theodore Judah crafted a detailed 13,000-word plan for a transcontinental railroad and shared it with key political figures including Cabinet secretaries and members of Congress. By September 1859, he had been selected as the official lobbyist for the Pacific Railroad Convention, which endorsed his vision for surveying, funding, and building the line. That December, Judah returned to Washington, where he set up a lobbying office inside the U.S. Capitol. He met with President James Buchanan and spoke on behalf of the convention before Congress.
Theodore Judah returned to California in 1860, still searching for a practical route through the Sierra Nevada suitable for a railroad. That year, local miner Daniel Strong wrote to Judah describing a wagon toll road he had surveyed over the Sierra, which he believed could also work for a railroad. Also in 1860, civil engineer Charles Marsh, who had previously surveyed a potential route between Sacramento and Nevada City, met with Judah. They ventured into the Sierra together, examining the Henness Pass Turnpike Company’s route, measuring elevations and distances, and discussing whether a transcontinental railroad was possible. Both were convinced it could be done. Judah, Marsh, and Strong then gathered local merchants and businessmen to seek investors for their proposed railroad project.
From January or February 1861 until July, Theodore Judah and Strong led a ten-person team on an expedition to map a path for the railroad through the Sierra Nevada. They traveled through Clipper Gap and Emigrant Gap, crossed Donner Pass, and headed south toward Truckee. Their work revealed a route across the Sierras that was gentle enough for a train, though it still required significant effort to prepare for actual construction.
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In February 1860, Representative Samuel Curtis of Iowa introduced a bill to fund a transcontinental railroad, but it failed in the Senate due to opposition from southern states who preferred a route near the 42nd parallel. Curtis tried again in 1861, only to fail once more. After southern states seceded from the Union, the House passed the bill on May 6, 1862, and the Senate followed on June 20. President Lincoln signed the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 into law on July 1. The act authorized two companies—the Central Pacific in the west and the Union Pacific in the mid-west—to build the railroad from the Missouri River at Council Bluffs, Iowa, to Sacramento, California, and on to San Francisco Bay. A second act was passed in 1864, the Pacific Railroad Act of 1863, which established the standard gauge for these federally financed railways.
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In November 1860, Collis Huntington, a Sacramento hardware merchant, heard Judah speak about a transcontinental railroad at the St. Charles Hotel. He asked Judah to his office to hear the full proposal. Huntington convinced him to take money from himself and four partners: Mark Hopkins, his business partner; James Bailey, a jeweler; Leland Stanford, a grocer; and Charles Crocker, a dry-goods merchant. Each put up $1,500, and they created a board of directors. The group became known as The Big Four, and the company they formed was called the Central Pacific Railroad.
Before construction could begin, Judah traveled to New York City to raise money to buy out The Big Four. Shortly after arriving, he died on November 2, 1863, from yellow fever he had contracted during a journey over the Panama Railroad’s route through the Isthmus of Panama. The Central Pacific Railroad’s Engineering Department then passed into the hands of his successor, Samuel S. Montegue. Also part of the transition was Lewis Metzler Clement, a Canadian-trained Chief Assistant Engineer who would later become Acting Chief Engineer and Superintendent of Track.
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To help the railroads raise money, Congress gave them wide strips of land—200 feet wide—as right-of-way corridors, plus space for stations and maintenance yards. They also received alternate sections of government land, about 6,400 acres per mile on each side of the tracks, creating a checkerboard pattern. The railroad companies got the odd-numbered sections, while the federal government kept the even ones. This land was sold to settlers in places like the Sacramento Valley and Nebraska, helping drive westward expansion. The total area of land grants to the Union Pacific and Central Pacific was larger than the state of Texas—about 130 million acres from the federal government and another 50 million from states.
Congress passed the Homestead Acts between 1861 and 1863 to encourage people to move west. These acts gave settlers 160 acres of land, as long as they improved it. The railroad companies were granted land too, but they had to sell any unused land after three years at the government's standard price of $1.25 per acre. If they couldn’t repay their bonds, all their railroad property would go back to the U.S. government. This was risky, since the western territories were sparsely populated and not guaranteed to make enough money to pay off the loans. Still, the promise of land drew thousands of settlers westward.
In return for the land grants, the railroads had to move government workers and supplies at rates half of what was normal. The land was given out in a checkerboard pattern, with the government keeping every other section. That land the government kept usually gained double its value once the railroad was built. The land grants were a good deal for the government.
The government gave land grants to help build the transcontinental railroad, and by 1899, the loans for several Pacific railroads were fully paid off—$63 million in principal and $105 million in interest. For 80 years, the government provided these companies with roughly a 50% discount on rates for both personnel and cargo, including during two world wars. Congress finally stopped those rate discounts at the end of World War II. The land grants had already brought in more money than anyone could have imagined—several times over.
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The federal government had given the railroad companies big subsidies, but the capitalists behind the project knew they wouldn’t make money from the railroad itself for months or even years. So they decided to profit during construction instead. Both the Union Pacific and Central Pacific formed their own separate companies to manage the work. In the west, the men running the Central Pacific created a simple company called the "Contract and Finance Company." Across the country, the Union Pacific picked a foreign-sounding name, “Crédit Mobilier of America.” This company would later be caught up in a major scandal that affected the railroad’s future.
The lack of federal oversight meant that both the Union Pacific and Central Pacific were paid based on the number of miles of track they laid, even though only one line would eventually be used between them. This created a situation where each company had an incentive to build past the other, profiting from the overlap. The practice was probably accidental, but it was captured in photographs taken by Union Pacific’s photographer Andrew J. Russell, including images of the Promontory Trestle construction.
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Many of the engineers and surveyors hired by the Union Pacific had worked during the Civil War repairing and running the U.S. Military Railroad, which controlled over 2,000 miles of track by the war’s end. The company brought in their experience building and fixing truss bridges. Most of the semi-skilled workers were drawn from discharged soldiers, both Union and Confederate, along with Irish immigrants who had arrived in the country.
After 1864, the Central Pacific Railroad received the same government support as the Union Pacific, plus help from California and San Francisco. They brought in engineers from Canada and Europe but struggled to find workers, as most white locals preferred mining or farming. So they hired Chinese laborers fleeing poverty and war in Guangdong province. These workers proved strong and reliable, leading the CPRR to recruit more from Canton. Despite their small size and little experience, the Chinese did most of the tough manual labor, since animals and basic tools could only do so much. The railroad also hired some Black workers escaping post-war hardship. Most were paid $30 a month with food and shelter, though Chinese workers initially got $31 and preferred cooking their own meals. In 1867, after a strike, wages rose to $35 a month—equivalent to $810 today. The CPRR realized that skilled labor at low pay was key: "Chinese labor proved to be Central Pacific's salvation."
White workers building the transcontinental railroad in the 19th century suffered from dysentery more often than Chinese laborers did. That difference came down to basic hygiene: Chinese workers drank boiled water, and they also kept hot water available for bathing every day. These practices helped protect them from illness while working under difficult conditions.
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The Central Pacific broke ground January 8, 1863. Due to limited East Coast transportation, nearly all tools and machinery—rails, switches, turntables, cars, and locomotives—had to be shipped by train to eastern ports. From there, they loaded onto ships that sailed around South America's Cape Horn or were offloaded at the Isthmus of Panama. There, cargo traveled across paddle steamers and the Panama Railroad using 5-foot gauge, which didn't match the CPRR's 4-foot-8+1⁄2-inch gauge, making that route about twice as expensive per pound. Once materials reached the San Francisco Bay area, they moved up the Sacramento River by paddle steamers for about 130 miles to Sacramento, the new state capital. Many items arrived dismantled and had to be reassembled. Wooden ties, trestles, bridges, firewood, and telegraph poles were harvested locally and brought to the site.
The Union Pacific Railroad didn’t begin building until July 1865, nearly eighteen months after the Central Pacific had started. That delay came from trouble getting money and from the Civil War making it hard to find workers and materials. The company started in Omaha, Nebraska, a new town that wasn’t yet connected by rail to Council Bluffs, Iowa. To get the equipment needed to start work, they shipped it initially by paddle steamers on the Missouri River, delivering it first to Omaha and then to Council Bluffs.
The Union Pacific faced rising costs for railroad supplies after 1865, as companies building or repairing railroads in the South competed with them for materials, driving prices up.
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When the transcontinental railroad was being built, the United States used two different track gauges. In Britain, the standard gauge measured 4 feet 8+1⁄2 inches, or 1,435 millimeters, and most northern railways had adopted it. But much of the southern part of the country used a wider gauge of 5 feet, or 1,524 millimeters. This difference meant that trains couldn’t simply continue from one line to another without stopping. Moving railway cars between tracks required swapping out the trucks, or unloading and reloading cargo, which took a long time and slowed shipments. For the transcontinental railroad, builders chose the standard gauge that is still used today.
By 1865, the Bessemer process and open hearth furnace steel-making were already in use, but the benefits of steel rails over iron ones hadn’t been proven yet. The transcontinental railroad was built initially with iron rails, mostly flat-bottomed I-beam shapes weighing either 56 or 66 pounds per yard. Railroad companies focused on finishing the project quickly and cheaply. It didn’t take long before most railroads switched to steel rails entirely.
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The Union Pacific route stretched 1,087 miles from Council Bluffs, Iowa, where it began on the eastern side of the Missouri River. Omaha was selected by President Abraham Lincoln as the location for its Transfer Depot, a hub where up to seven railroads could handle mail and goods bound west. Initially, trains crossed the river by ferry, but in winter, when the river froze, sleighs were used instead. It wasn’t until 1872 that a bridge was built— the 2,750-foot-long Union Pacific Missouri River Bridge.
After starting west from Omaha along the Missouri River bluffs, the railroad climbed through the valley and crossed the Elkhorn River before building the 1,500-foot Loup River bridge. Following that, it moved along the north side of the Platte River valley, staying close to the routes used by the Oregon, Mormon, and California Trails. By December 1865, the Union Pacific had finished only forty miles of track, reaching Fremont, Nebraska, and another ten miles beyond that.
At the end of 1865, Peter A. Dey, who was Chief Engineer of the Union Pacific, quit his job because he disagreed with Thomas C. Durant, one of the main financiers of the railroad. After the Civil War ended and the government started watching things more closely, Durant brought back Grenville M. Dodge, a former engineer from the Missouri & Mississippi Railroad, to lead the construction. That’s when the Union Pacific really began rushing westward.
Former Union General John "Jack" Casement took over as Chief Engineer for the Union Pacific, bringing new energy to the project. He organized portable bunkhouses for workers, including a galley car and even a herd of cows that traveled with the train to provide fresh meat. Hunters were hired to supply buffalo meat from the bison herds. Small survey teams scouting ahead often faced attacks from Native Americans, which led the U.S. Army to increase cavalry patrols. As tensions grew, the Army responded with larger forces. Alongside the railroad's progress, temporary towns made of canvas tents—known as “Hell on wheels”—sprang up to support the construction effort.
The Platte River valley's six-foot-per-mile slope enabled the Union Pacific to lay a mile of track daily in 1866 as they moved west. Though building bridges caused main delays, one key structure was the 2,600-foot "½ mile bridge" crossing the North Platte River, built with steam pile drivers and completed near where the Platte splits into its two branches. After laying about 240 miles that year, they founded the town of North Platte, Nebraska, in December 1866. In late 1866, former Major General Grenville M. Dodge was named Chief Engineer, while General "Jack" Casement continued as chief construction boss and his brother Daniel served as financial officer. The original emigrant trails—Oregon, Mormon, and California—followed river valleys, including the North Platte through Casper, Wyoming, then over the Continental Divide at South Pass, which was easier for ox-drawn wagons but much more costly and difficult for rail construction than a route connecting to Denver.
Since 1864, efforts had been made to find a shorter and better route for the railroad. By 1867, a new path was surveyed that followed part of the South Platte River through western Nebraska. After entering what is now Wyoming, the line climbed a gradual ridge between Lodgepole Creek and Crow Creek to reach Evans Pass, also known as Sherman's Pass. This pass, discovered by James Evans—a surveyor and engineer employed by the Union Pacific—was located in the Great Divide Basin around 1864. The pass stands today at 8,200 feet, marked by the Ames Monument, which honors two major backers of the railroad and the ghost town of Sherman. From North Platte, Nebraska, the track moved westward and upward along this new route across the Nebraska and Wyoming Territories, following the north bank of the South Platte River into what became the state of Wyoming at Lone Pine.
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The Central Pacific Railroad built 690 miles of track starting in Sacramento in 1863, pushing through the Sierra Nevada mountains to reach the new state of Nevada. Their path took them over Donner Pass, where the elevation rose from just 40 feet in Sacramento to 7,000 feet, a change that had to happen over about 90 miles with an average of 76 feet per mile. The route was mapped by Theodore Judah, the company’s chief engineer, who died in 1863. He found a path up a ridge between the American River and the Bear and South Yuba Rivers. Near “Cape Horn CPRR,” there was only one stretch of about three miles where the grade rose slightly above two percent.
In June 1864, Central Pacific entrepreneurs opened the Dutch Flat and Donner Lake Wagon Road, a toll road costing about three hundred thousand dollars and taking a year to build. This route carried freight and passengers over much of the path the CPRR would later use to cross Donner Summit, connecting to Nevada's mining towns. As the railroad advanced, combining rail and wagon shipments made freight rates more competitive. The toll road carried an estimated thirteen million dollars worth of freight annually as the Comstock Lode boomed, helping pay for railroad construction. When the railroad reached Reno, it handled most of Nevada's freight, causing prices to drop sharply as shipping costs fell. The rail route followed the general path of the Truckee branch of the California Trail, heading east over Donner Pass and down the Truckee River valley.
After Judah's death in 1863, Samuel S. Montague became Chief Engineer for the Central Pacific, with Lewis M. Clement as Assistant Chief Engineer and Charles Cadwalader serving as second assistant. Detailed surveys had to be completed to determine where cuts, fills, trestles, bridges, and tunnels would be built. Projects expected to take a long time were started as soon as the track route was confirmed, with work crews and equipment sent forward in advance. Because of how widely the work was spread out, it was divided into two sections: Clement led the upper division from Blue Cañon to Truckee, while Cadwalader was in charge of the lower stretch from Truckee to the Nevada border. Additional assistant engineers were assigned to individual tasks such as constructing a bridge, tunnel, or trestle, all under the direction of experienced supervisors.
From 1865 to 1868, the Central Pacific built eleven tunnels in the Sierra, with seven of them in just a two-mile stretch east of Donner Summit. These tunnels were carved out by drilling holes in the rock face, filling them with black powder, and detonating the charge to break through. The powder came from the California Powder Works near Santa Cruz, which began operations in 1864 after the Civil War blocked imports from the East. The Central Pacific used this black powder heavily—sometimes as much as five hundred 25-pound kegs a day.
The summit tunnel, numbered as Number 6, stretched 1,660 feet and began in late 1865, well before the railhead reached it. It was carved through solid granite, advancing at just 0.98 feet per day per face. Three eight-hour shifts of workers drilled holes by hand using rock drills and hammers, then filled them with black powder to blast the stone loose. One crew drilled while another cleared away the debris after each explosion. In the winter of 1865–1866, work on the tunnel had to stop because there was no way to supply the workers or provide them with shelter. The crews were moved east to work on bridges and track grading in the Truckee River canyon.
In 1866, workers on the Central Pacific Railroad began digging a 125-foot vertical shaft at the center of the summit tunnel, opening two new faces for work coming from both directions. They used a steam engine from an old locomotive as a winch to pull out rock from the shaft and the tunnel faces. By winter 1866–67, they had built a camp near the tunnel to keep working through the cold. The tunnel’s cross section was 16 feet wide and high, with an 11-foot vertical wall. When nitroglycerin was introduced—made locally—the team advanced faster than one and a half feet per day per face. They used it to deepen the tunnel to the required height after all four faces met, pushing progress even further. Most other tunnels were dug from both ends and met in the middle.
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Most railroad money came from selling government-backed bonds, paid per mile of track completed. The government provided land rights, saving time and money, with bonds repaid through land sales and passenger/freight income. Union Pacific's engineers and surveyors were mostly college trained, though many had served in the Union Army during the Civil War, gaining experience maintaining tracks and running trains. Once funding and engineering teams were in place, key workers and supervisors were hired for their railroad experience and leadership skills. Semi-skilled positions were filled with available labor. Engineers directed workers on where to go, what to do, and how to complete each task, while also supplying construction materials needed.
Survey teams mapped out the terrain for the transcontinental railroad, and engineers chose the best route from those surveys. They marked where hills would need to be cut and depressions filled or bridged. Coordinators managed supplies, making sure everything arrived on time, while specialized teams handled explosive work, tunneling, and bridging. These crews were sent ahead with equipment so they could finish their tasks before track-laying crews arrived. Finance officers ensured workers were paid and materials were purchased. The Central Pacific crew set a record by laying ten miles of track in one day, marking the event with a signpost for passing trains to see.
While track-laying crews worked day and night, other teams built the infrastructure needed to keep the railroad running. Stations had to be set up with supplies for fuel, water, mail, passengers, and freight. These stations needed people to operate them, and maintenance depots were constructed to keep all the equipment in working order. Telegraph operators were hired for each station so trains could be tracked and scheduled safely on single tracks, avoiding crashes or delays. Passing sidings were built to let trains go in opposite directions without blocking each other. The steam locomotives needed constant coal or wood, and water towers had to be built and kept full for refilling the engines’ tanks.
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The Union Pacific railroad through Nebraska and Wyoming was built largely by Civil War veterans, both Union and Confederate, along with many recent immigrants. Brigham Young, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, secured contracts that promised jobs for about 2,000 church members, hoping the railroad would boost commerce in Utah. Church members did much of the actual construction work in Utah. But construction superintendent Durant repeatedly refused to pay the wages he'd agreed to. His failure to pay led to a strike by unpaid workers in Piedmont, Wyoming, where they halted the train carrying him to the final spike ceremony—only after he paid them did the event proceed. Young’s representatives tried to force Durant to honor the contract but failed in court.
The Central Pacific relied heavily on thousands of Chinese immigrant workers, called "Celestials," to build its roadbed, bridges, and tunnels under non-Chinese supervisors. These workers came mainly from Guangdong Province, where poverty and violence from the Taiping Rebellion pushed many to seek work elsewhere. Though Charles Crocker, one of the "Big Four," initially doubted their strength and experience, he soon changed his mind after seeing their productivity. Most Chinese laborers were represented by a Chinese boss who handled translation, pay, discipline, and communication with American supervisors. Many spoke little English, and supervisors knew only basic Chinese. Workers were paid between one and three dollars per day, with some imported directly from China receiving less. A diligent worker could save over twenty dollars monthly—considered a fortune. By late 1865, about 3,000 Chinese and 1,700 white workers were employed, with nearly all whites in supervisory or skilled roles.
The early work on the Central Pacific was tough, mostly building the railroad bed through the Sierra Nevada mountains. They had to cut through hills, blast around them, fill in washes, build bridges and trestles, dig and blast tunnels, then lay the rails. Once they got past the Sierras and into the Carson Range, things moved faster because the ground was nearly flat. On one occasion, they laid ten miles of track in a single day as a demonstration of how quickly they could move on flat land—similar to what the Union Pacific was doing in Wyoming and Nebraska.
The work of building the railroad was split into tasks, with surveyors and engineers first mapping the route. Workers then prepared the ground, dug through hills, filled in valleys, built trestles, bridges, and tunnels, and laid ties by hand. The track-laying crew placed rails on those ties, spiked them down, and bolted fishplates to connect the sections. Meanwhile, another team laid telegraph poles and wire, cooks made meals, and clerks handled records and communications. Most workers lived in camps near the work site, which were moved as the railhead advanced. The Union Pacific had been using mobile bunkhouse cars since 1866. Nearly all roadbed work was done manually, with tools like shovels, picks, axes, wheelbarrows, and mules for transport. Black powder was the main method for blasting rock. Independent contractors provided lumber and ties, cutting and hauling them as needed.
Tunnels were blasted through hard rock by hand, with workers drilling holes into the stone and filling them with black powder. Sometimes cracks in the rock could be widened and blown loose as well. The broken pieces were then collected and either used for fill or roadbed, or simply dumped out of the tunnel as waste. A typical day's progress was just a foot or so. Some tunnels took nearly a year to complete, and the Summit Tunnel, the longest, required almost two years to finish.
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On January 8, 1863, Governor Leland Stanford broke ground in Sacramento to start building the Central Pacific Railroad. The work moved fast at first through the Sacramento Valley, but then the foothills of the Sierra Nevada slowed things down. As they pushed through the mountains, winter storms and a lack of steady workers made progress difficult. By January 7, 1865, a want ad in the Sacramento Union sought 5,000 laborers. A trial group of Chinese workers was hired and proved successful, so the company began hiring more Chinese emigrants. Many came from poor parts of China, some fleeing the Taiping Rebellion, and were willing to endure harsh conditions. As the line climbed higher, tunneling became necessary, which again slowed construction.
The first step in building the Central Pacific railroad was surveying the route to figure out where big excavations, tunnels, and bridges would be needed. Crews began preparing these spots even before the tracks reached them. Workers and supplies were brought up to the job sites by wagon teams, and work on multiple sections moved forward at the same time. One benefit of building tunnels during winter was that the work could often continue because it was done indoors. But living quarters had to be built outside, and getting new supplies was tough. Winter conditions, with snowslides and avalanches, made the job dangerous and caused some deaths.
To carve a tunnel, one worker held a rock drill against the granite face while others swung eighteen-pound sledgehammers to drive the drill deeper into the rock. When the hole was about ten inches deep, it was filled with black powder, a fuse was set, and then ignited from a safe distance. Nitroglycerin, invented less than two decades before the railroad's construction, was used heavily during the project. This was especially true on the Central Pacific Railroad, which operated its own nitroglycerin plant to ensure a steady supply of the volatile explosive. The plant was run by Chinese laborers, who were willing to work under the most dangerous conditions.
Chinese laborers built fifteen tunnels through the Sierra Nevada, each about 32 feet high and 16 feet wide. When vertical shafts were added to speed work, digging started in the middle and at both ends simultaneously. Early on, hand-powered derricks pulled loose rock up the shafts, later replaced by steam hoists. Working four faces at once—two in the center and one at each end—progress was slow, just 0.85 feet per day per face on average, or 1.18 feet, historian George Kraus said. J. O. Wilder, a Central Pacific-Southern Pacific employee, called the Chinese "as steady, hard-working a set of men as could be found." At Tunnel No. 6, nearly all workers were Chinese with white foremen and a boss/translator. A single foreman led a gang of 30 to 40 men, with 12 to 15 heading the tunnel while others cleared debris. Once past the mountains, work sped up. Under James Harvey Strobridge's direction, Central Pacific crews laid 10 miles 56 feet of track in one day on April 28, 1869. Horace Hamilton Minkler, a track foreman, laid the final rail before the Last Spike was driven.
To keep the Central Pacific Railroad's Sierra grade open in winter, workers built 37 miles of large wooden snow sheds and galleries between Blue Cañon and Truckee starting in 1867. That work used 2,500 men and six material trains, finishing in 1869. The sheds had two sides and steep roofs, mostly made from local timber and logs. Snow galleries had only one side, with roofs that rose up the mountain, letting avalanches slide over them—some reached 200 feet up the slope. Masonry walls, like the "Chinese Walls" at Donner Summit, were built across canyons to protect the wooden structures. Some of these concrete sheds, especially at crossovers, are still in use today.
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Thomas Clark Durant was the major investor in the Union Pacific, and he'd made his money smuggling Confederate cotton with Grenville M. Dodge. Durant picked routes that benefited places where he owned land, and he timed announcements about connections to other railroad lines to suit his stock dealings. He arranged for an associate to submit the construction bid to Crédit Mobilier, a company he controlled, manipulating the finances and government subsidies to build himself another fortune. Durant appointed Dodge as chief engineer and Jack Casement as construction boss.
In the East, work began in Omaha, Nebraska, with the Union Pacific Railroad, which moved fast at first thanks to the open land of the Great Plains. But as the track pushed into areas held by Native American tribes, tensions rose because the railroad broke promises made in treaties between the tribes and the U.S. government. War parties started attacking the labor camps that followed the line. In response, Union Pacific beefed up security and hired people to kill American Bison, which were both a danger to trains and the main food source for many Plains Indians. When the Native Americans realized the so-called "Iron Horse" was destroying their way of life, they began killing workers too. The railroad responded with even stronger protections, and construction pressed forward.
General William Tecumseh Sherman had the job of overseeing the area west of the Mississippi and east of the Rocky Mountains after the war, and protecting the railroads was his main goal. In 1867, he wrote to General Ulysses S. Grant saying, "we are not going to let thieving, ragged Indians check and stop the progress" of the railroads.
On the ground in the West, General Philip Henry Sheridan took command much as he had during the Civil War, when he ordered "scorched earth" tactics that would later influence Sherman's March to the Sea. He brought that same approach to the task at hand, applying his experience from the Shenandoah Valley to the challenges of building the railroad.
In 1869, as the Union Pacific Railroad pushed westward, the destruction of the buffalo herds helped bring an end to the Indian Wars. Native Americans were forced onto reservations, and the Comanche chief Tosawi reportedly told General Sheridan, "Me Tosawi. Me good Indian," to which Sheridan allegedly responded, "The only good Indians I ever saw were dead." The quote was later misattributed, with people saying Sheridan had said, "The only good Indian is a dead Indian," though he denied ever making that statement.
By the end of the 19th century, fewer than 300 buffalo remained in the wild. In response, Congress passed a law that banned the killing of any birds or animals within Yellowstone National Park, a move intended to protect the last surviving herd. As time went on, conservationists created additional wildlife preserves, which helped the species recover slowly. Today, more than 200,000 bison live across North America.
In 1878, Sheridan, writing in his Annual Report as General of the U.S. Army, recognized how the railroad was reshaping the American West. He also noted that Native Americans were relocated to reservations without compensation, other than a promise of religious instruction and minimal food and clothing. As Sheridan put it, those promises were never kept.
The harm done to Native American communities was profound and deliberate. Their lands were seized, their ways of life destroyed, and their health undermined through disease and displacement. It was this treatment that led to conflict, not surprise, and it is no wonder that the challenges faced by Indigenous peoples were so severe. The consequences of broken promises and forced change created lasting difficulties that cannot be ignored.
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Six years after the groundbreaking, the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads came together at Promontory Summit in Utah Territory. The Union Pacific side was led by Union Pacific No 119, a 4-4-0 type from 1868, as it pushed westward. The final rails were laid by Irish laborers. On the other side, the Central Pacific brought its own 1868 4-4-0, No 60 Jupiter, moving eastward. The Chinese workers completed the last stretch of track there.
At Promontory Summit on May 10, 1869, the two engines met as Leland Stanford drove the golden spike that joined the transcontinental railroad. That spike now sits at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, while a second one is displayed in Sacramento. The event was broadcast live across the country through telegraph lines, with each hammer strike sending a click to stations nationwide—the telegraph operator sent the clicks after the actual hammer strokes were missed. Just moments after the ceremonial spike was replaced by a regular iron one, a message was sent coast to coast reading simply “DONE.” Travel time between the coasts dropped from six months or more to just one week.
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When the golden spike was driven, the transcontinental rail line linked Omaha, Nebraska to Sacramento, California, but not yet to the Atlantic or Pacific oceans. The Central Pacific acquired the struggling Western Pacific Railroad in 1867 and restarted work in February 1868 after a halt in October 1866 caused by funding issues. The final section was finished at the Mossdale crossing of the San Joaquin River on September 6, 1869. The first transcontinental passengers arrived at the Alameda Terminal on the east side of San Francisco Bay, where they took the steamer Alameda to cross the bay to San Francisco. On November 8, 1869, the Central Pacific completed its rail connection to Oakland, California, also on the East Bay, from where travelers continued their journey to San Francisco by ferry. Originally chartered to reach San Jose, the Western Pacific route was altered by the Central Pacific, which chose to build along the East Bay instead. This path roughly followed what would later become U.S. Route 50. A more direct line came with the purchase of the California Pacific Railroad, which crossed the Sacramento River and traveled southwest through Davis to Benicia, crossing the Carquinez Strait using a train ferry before following the coasts of San Pablo and San Francisco bays to Richmond and the Port of Oakland. In 1930, a rail bridge replaced the Benicia ferries.
Very early on, the Central Pacific learned that keeping their track open in winter across the Sierras would be difficult. At first, they tried using snowplows mounted on their steam engines, but that only worked part of the time. So they built snow sheds over sections of track to protect against deep snow and avalanches. Those efforts eventually kept the lines clear nearly all year long. Both railroads also began upgrading their work soon after, building better bridges and viaducts, digging tunnels, and laying heavier rails and stronger ties. The original tracks had been laid quickly with little concern for long-term durability, mainly focused on getting government subsidies. Once operating, it became necessary to improve the infrastructure, which wasn’t expensive since supplies could then be shipped directly from distant factories by rail.
The Union Pacific didn’t reach Council Bluffs from Omaha until 1872, when it finished the Missouri River Bridge. Years after the Civil War, railroads from Missouri began connecting, sparking a building boom. In July 1869, the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad completed the Hannibal Bridge in Kansas City—the first to cross the Missouri River. That line connected to Kansas Pacific trains heading to Denver, which had built the Denver Pacific Railway linking up with the Union Pacific. Then in August 1870, the Kansas Pacific drove its final spike at Strasburg, Colorado, connecting to the Denver Pacific line. That’s when the first true transcontinental railroad was finished—running from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Kansas City’s early role in linking up with the transcontinental railroad helped it become more important than Omaha as a major rail hub west of Chicago. Then, on June 4, 1876, an express train named the Transcontinental Express reached San Francisco after traveling the first transcontinental railroad. The journey had taken only 83 hours and 39 minutes from New York City, a dramatic change from ten years earlier when such a trip would have taken months by land or weeks by sea—possibly even going all the way around South America.
The Central Pacific Railroad merged with the Southern Pacific in 1885 to form the Southern Pacific Company. The Union Pacific took over the Southern Pacific in 1901, but was later required by the U.S. Supreme Court to divest it due to monopoly concerns. The two railroads came together again in 1996 when the Southern Pacific was sold back to the Union Pacific. Between 1901 and 1903, several parts of the Nevada line were realigned to improve grades and curves. In 1904, the Lucin Cutoff opened, bypassing the original route. The Promontory Summit rails were removed in 1942 for recycling during World War II, beginning with a ceremonial "undriving" at the Last Spike location.
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Despite the success of the transcontinental railroad and millions in government money, the Union Pacific nearly went bankrupt just three years after the Last Spike. Details came to light about overcharges from a company called Crédit Mobilier, which had been officially hired to build the track. The scandal became huge during the 1872 presidential election, when Ulysses S. Grant was re-elected. It would not be settled until the death of a congressman who was supposed to control the corruption but instead ended up benefiting from it.
Durant had originally come up with the idea to have Crédit Mobilier subcontract the actual track work for the railroad. After buying out employee Herbert Hoxie for $10,000, Durant took control of the company. Under his direction, Crédit Mobilier began charging Union Pacific far more than usual—often twice or even more than standard rates—for the track construction. This practice slowed down progress on the Union Pacific line.
President Lincoln turned to Massachusetts Congressman Oakes Ames, a member of the railroad committee, to address the delays and corruption plaguing the project. In return for his efforts, Ames arranged for his brother Oliver Ames Jr. to become president of the Union Pacific Railroad. Meanwhile, Oakes Ames himself took the top position at Crédit Mobilier, the construction company set up to build the transcontinental railroad.
Ames gave stock options to other politicians while still pushing the overcharges that were part of the scandal. Among those caught up in the controversy were Vice President Schuyler Colfax, who was later cleared, and future President James Garfield. The situation became a major political issue, linking high-level government figures to the questionable financial dealings behind the railroad's construction.
The scandal came to light in 1872 when the New York Sun published letters revealing the deal between Henry S. McComb and Ames. A Congressional investigation followed, recommending that Ames be kicked out of Congress. That punishment was reduced to a formal reprimand instead. Ames died three months later.
After leaving the Union Pacific, Durant was replaced by a new railroad tycoon named Jay Gould. Gould became the main owner of the company after the financial crisis known as the Panic of 1873, which allowed him to buy up cheap assets. Among those was control of the Union Pacific Railroad and also Western Union.
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