[Music] [Music] [Music] the first Transcontinental Railroad has been called the engineering Marvel of the 19th century and a Flatout Swindle it opened new economies in the American West while consuming vast quantities of its natural resources it birthed one way of life on the Great Plains and destroyed another in making the road a Young Nation would display its capacity for boldness Ingenuity and Industry it would also reveal its capacity for greed graft and Mindless Violence new Heroes of business and industry such as Hardware dealer kalis P Huntington and construction boss Jack casement would make names for themselves as would the engaging but rapacious scoundrel Thomas C Durant these were bigger than life kinds of Adventures that were going on out west here was in essence the railroad representing civilization moving into the Wilderness it was just the feet that boggled the imagination that from Omaha on the Missouri River they could build all the way to Sacramento on the Sacramento River with nothing in between these two early settlements the Transcontinental Riv Road was the technological manifestation of manifest destiny this was how we were going to make this all one country even before construction began the Transcontinental Railroad had precious Freight to Bear the hopes and dreams of an entire nation it hauled the promise of New Wealth to the Filthy Rich the landless poor and everybody in between as the road was built Huntington casement and Durant would be joined by congressmen Engineers prostitutes laborers and Main Street merchants in a desperate race for the [Music] loop and the stakes were not merely personal with the railroad complete it was asserted America could take its place as the first nation of the world in Commerce in government in intellectual and moral Supremacy w [Music] American Experience is made possible by the Alfred peace loan Foundation to enhance public understanding of the role of Technology the foundation also seeks to portray the lives of the men and women engaged in scientific and technological Pursuit Liberty Mutual Insurance is a proud supporter of the American experience and by helping people live safer more secure lives we're also proud supporters of the American dream at the Scots company we help make Gardens more beautiful lawns Greener trees taller if there's a Better Business to be in please let us know and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you thank you [Music] the man who would fire America's first Transcontinental Railroad Theodore Judah was born in 1826 to a nation On The Rise the United States was a young Republic but already possessed of big IDE ideas for itself and as early as the 1830s while Judah was still a school boy pamphleteers began to Champion one entirely new idea a railroad from the Atlantic to the Pacific the earliest railroad projectors were zealous as missionaries and about as practical none of these men had even seen the Far West yet they insisted this railroad would be the main Commercial Road between Europe and Asia the whole Commerce of the V past world one exclaimed will be tumbled into our lap few Americans bought into these dreamy projections much of the West Was presumed useless a land said one United States Senator which no American citizen should be compelled to inhabit unless as a punishment for [Music] Crime there's so much land so much space air the clouds everything is is is almost [Music] magnified the Rocky Mountains to the West they're awesome Rivers when when they're flooding awesome a tornado awesome so these things are much greater than than a than a human being the country was empty essentially miles and miles of Sagebrush between anything they recognized in the Missouri River Valley until they got into the mountains of the West it was basically a big Blank Slate there were a few lonely military and trading posts out west the Mormon stronghold of Salt Lake City and about 350,000 Indians some friendly many not and as discovery of gold in California began to draw Travelers across that land those who made the nearly 2,000 m trip found out how malicious the interior West could be it was 5 months of sheer misery and there were many people who died along the way whether by uh the hands of Indians or from uh dissenter or chalera accidents uh starvation lack of water the 40m desert got its name during the Overland immigration to California during the gold rush it was the distance from the last good water of the Humbolt River as it evaporated and trickled into the sand before they finally got to the trucky River 40 Mi without water in a world that's that's powered by animals is a long distance as the animals had difficulty they might have to lighten their loads and so they might have tossed aside things like cook stoves rocking Chairs furniture um almost any type of household goods and certainly all along those Trails there are Graves where people had to bury their loved ones and move on without them there was a danger of the bodies being dug up by wolves and other Predators so usually people would be buried right on the trail itself and then the the constant tapping down of all of those covered wagons going past would just Harden the Earth and make it impossible for the grave to be desecrated so most of the graves were not marked and there's no way of knowing how many thousands of people died along that route as goldrich veins of ore were cracked open in California the US Army began to worry about protecting this valuable but far-flung State and say safeguarding both the people and precious Goods flowing East and West a railroad could do it with all sorts of side benefits railroads in the East were already generating enormous revenues for owners and prosperity for the towns and cities along the lines many in Congress recognized that there was potential in a railroad to the Western sea and agreed to fund surveys of possible roots for what was known as the Pacific Railroad they had personal stakes in the matter very realistic Stakes the congressmen that were active on behalf of specific geographical points to be uh starting points for the railroad were for the most part invested in those communities Steven Douglas owned property in the site of Chicago he also owned area in duth Thomas Hart Benton for instance was very interested that the railroad would go through Missouri and head off toward the Rockies that way Steven Douglas would not cooperate unless the railroad went through Illinois the southern politicians people like Jefferson Davis wanted it to start in Georgia and move across there was just no way that they could come to any kind of [Music] decision though Congress appeared to be hopelessly deadlocked the idea of a coast to coast railroad had captured the imagination of Engineers All Over America and none more than Theodore Judah Judah was a practically trained civil engineer having begun work on Eastern railroads at age 13 before heading west in 1854 to build the first railroad in California his wife years later said that Theodore Juda took the job that took him to California because he wanted to have something to do with the Pacific Railroad I suspect every civil engineer in the States at the time wanted to have something to do with the Pacific Railroad he really had what his wife liked to call the Pacific Railroad bug and there were some people in Sacramento who called him crazy Judah because he was such a monomaniac about the rail road Theodore Judah had passible engineering skills but a genius for Friendly Persuasion he could rapid eyesee about 90 ton locomotives with driving wheels 14 ft in diameter pulling Freight and passengers across the planes at 100 mph Judah also understood that before investors came on board they wanted to know what it would really cost to build the road through Prairie desert and mountains to grade and Bridge and tunnel and to lay nearly 2,000 Mi of iron rail but Judas simply didn't have the money to conduct the sort of survey that would answer those questions so he went to Congress to try to get a few happy incentives for potential investors when Theodore Judah arrived in Washington in the fall of 1859 talk of slavery and secession was crowding out all other business in the nation's capital still he pressed his case even without a proper survey Judah insists that a railroad could Race Across The Plains scale the Rockies and push easily through the Great Basin the biggest obstacle was the Sierra a mountains and he'd yet to find a way through in his earliest projections judah's railroad would skirt the range to the North in 1860 he's still thinking in terms of a railroad coming around the northern part of the state and up until that time he had never been in the SE or Nevada looking for railroads but in July of 1860 California is a different world than it was when he left the previous October everybody is trying to get to Virginia City Nevada the comto was discovered in late 1859 California had basically been in depression for 5 years the Gold Rush had been over and suddenly there's silver just across the mountains and there's this huge rush from California to Virginia City and people are beginning to think they could build a railroad to Virginia City there's suddenly Financial incentive to build directly into the Sierra [Music] in October of 1860 a local storekeeper named Daniel strong invited Judah to have a look at a place where he thought a railroad could cross the sieras if it worked strong knew it was the straightest line to the comto load and his little town of Dutch Flat would Prosper it was a difficult two-day ride to the summit but on top when Judah lived East out along an immigrant Trail largely abandoned after the Donner Pary ugly demise the engineer understood immediately what he saw so many places in the sier that there's a double Summit you come across the mountains and you drop down into a valley such as the valley where Lake Tahoe is and then on the other side you've got another Mountain Ridge that you have to cross and at Doner you've only got one Summit you come up the American River you go down the trucky River and by being on the the ridge above the river you have a nice continuous plane that uh that you use as a ramp he knew that this was going to be a shortcut to Virginia City this was going to make money Judah and strong Drew up Articles of Incorporation for the Central Pacific Railroad Company and started looking for investors at a meeting in Sacramento Judah managed to entice one very important Main Street businessman kalis P Huntington was a hardware wholesaler known for his willingness to bury competition and for his shrewd business sense when Huntington said he was considering judah's railroad proposition other Sacramento Merchants followed Huntington's business partner Mark Hopkins brid Goods Merchant Charles Crocker and his brother the attorney EB Crocker and Leland Stanford a wholesale grosser and would be Governor taken together the five were worth less than $150,000 they were mistrustful of others and fiercely protective of their solid credit ratings but with California's Gold Rush waning and their revenues falling this new project offered some hope even if the Sacramento Merchants failed to get a railroad through the sieras they could at least use judah's engineering for a Wagon Road to Virginia City Huntington was very practical and he wanted to know what's the return Hopkins didn't want any part of it he was saying what are we doing getting involved in this railroad we've already got a good thing going with this Hardware business and so all they did initially was give Judah enough money to do a survey and following that survey in October of 1861 Judah went back to Washington DC this time with maps and with profile in an office in the capital building Judah unfurled a 60ft long map and smaller profiles of his proposed line across the sieras when represent resentatives and Senators wandered in the 35-year-old engineer was always there to explain his plan it would take just over 12 million dollars to build the line across California he'd tell his visitors he'd show them where the bridges and tunnels would go the curves the grades the water tanks and depots [Music] looking at a map was one thing but what Judah would have to face in reality was the 7,000 ft high sieras with the Terrible Weather the 30t snow drifts the mudslides the Deep Rock cuts that had to be done the tunnels that had to be dug it was going to be a tremendous amount of work to actually get get this dream came across the mountains in the sieras judah's Plan called for bridging rivers and Ravines carving 20ft wide shelves out of sheer Mountain faces and driving 18 tunnels one more than 1,000 ft long through solid granite and there was not a manufacturer on the Pacific coast who could provide them locomotives or railroad cars let alone drills spikes and rails many in Congress shied at starting such a difficult and costly project as the Civil War raged but President Abraham Lincoln who had long Champion to Pacific Railroad was lobbying hard for the project Lincoln had a problem the Federal Union was falling apart he was fighting a costly and bloody Civil War to put the union together and here we had three Pacific States California Oregon 1859 Nevada 1863 three Pacific States that were a continent away it was essential for the conduct of the Civil War to have California money California had a fairly strong secessionist movement there was no way of guaranteeing that California would remain in the union that railroad is essential to keep the two coasts together on July 1st 1862 President Lincoln signed a bill that gave judah's own Central Pacific the right to build from Sacramento East and chartered a second company the Union Pacific to build from the Missouri River West the legislation did not specify a meeting point for the two roads but it did Grant the railroad Builders 6,400 acres of land for every mile of track laid and as much as $48,000 in government bonds for each mile completed there were strings of course and enough of them to hang both companies the government would withhold nearly 20% of the bonds until the entire line was in working order and it would not release a single dime to either company until it had built 40 Mi of working railroad if the road was not completed between the Missouri and Sacramento Rivers within a Dozen Years all Railroad Company assets would be forfeited when theer Judah returned with a franchise to build a Pacific Railroad I think his partners and at that time they were all equal Partners in this Corporation I think they were a little bit but um surprised and and realized that it was time that they had to put up or shut up on the morning of January 8th 1863 with Judah notably absent the Central Pacific began work with great Fanfare in downtown Sacramento where the railroad grade began thousands of people watched California's new governor Leland Stanford throw the first shovel full of dirt from the bunting fronted grandstand dignitaries heralded the coming of a mighty tide of wealth such as mankind has never realized before when the party broke up the CP Partners found themselves alone few others were willing to invest in such a dicey project when they began issuing contracts to local construction firms it proved a mess they discovered that the contractors were bidding against each other for the Fairly limited labor market and they weren't getting the job done and so it seemed to them that a better way to do it was to for one of them to go out and just have one contract and and supervise and coordinate all of the construction effort and for whatever reason Charles Crocker was the man that became the contractor initially and Theodore Judah was uncomfortable with that he just did not trust Crocker he didn't trust the idea he was afraid that these men were going to try to bleed the railroad dry he wasn't convinced that they were really serious about doing it Judah didn't have a good working relationship after the start with the big four and they really uh took the reins in their hands after they could see those was feasible civil engineering uh ways of going through the uh through the mountains and and um that's what they did uh they left Judah by the by the wayside even as their Crews were grading along judah's line the Sacramento shopkeepers were slow in paying their chief engineer they canel contracts Judah had made with iron makers in the East even questioned his lines of survey in the summer of 1863 there's a showdown and they basically tell Judah either you buy us out or we'll buy you out but there was absolutely no way they were going to go down the same path together from that point on officially Judah was still carried as chief engineer of the Central Pacific Railroad but Judah sailed East for the east coast in the fall of 1863 he had seen grade built he had seen a bridge built at Sacramento he had not seen any rail laid he had not seen any locomotives he had not seen any part of the railroad Judah is heading to New York we know that he's looking for partners there to help him buy out these guys in California that he's not getting along with Judah was really convinced that he that he could find some backers in the East he may have even had them lined up so he and his wife got on the boat and headed down to Panama crossed Panama got on another boat heading for New York and we will never know who those secret Partners might have been because Judah contracted either typhoid or yellow fever along the way when judah's ship docked in Manhattan the 37-year-old engineer was carried off the boat on a litter and deposited in a sick bed in the Metropolitan [Music] Hotel on October 26th 1863 while Judah lay a continent away the first rails of the Central Pacific were spiked to their ties before the news of the event reached him Theodore Judah was dead the 1862 Railroad Act did not specify a starting point in the East railroads had already been built out past the Mississippi River so the jumping off point for the new road would be somewhere along the Missouri but again Congress could not agree the burden of decision like so many other burdens fell on the stoop shoulders of President Abraham Lincoln in November of 1863 2 days before he gave the Gettysburg Address Lincoln puzzled over the maps and financial affidavits provided him by the Union Pacific Company Lincoln knew the 450 Mi across Nebraska's Plat River Valley offered a cheap and easy start he also knew he had political favors to repay so he chose as the Eastern terminus Council Bless Iowa he was nominated in 1860 on the third ballot Seward had been leading on the first ballot and his managers made all kinds of deals and the bulk of the Iowa delegates to the Republican National Convention switched over to Lincoln and he really owed them something after the 1860 election and this was kind of a payoff to Iowa this was happy news for Thomas Clark Durant the vice president of the new Union Pacific Railroad Company was heavily invested in real estate just across the river in Omaha Nebraska that real estate would be much more valuable if the railroad West began there so the real Terminus as far as Durant was concerned would be Omaha Thomas C Durant had begun his professional career as a doctor of Opthalmology but found the world of business a more invigorating occupation for a man of his thrusting personality he was a Restless energetic Man Who Loved making money and knew how to do it in fact throughout his life Durant showed a remarkable Integrity of purpose the Civil War he discovered was a bang up way to cash in on Contraband cotton Durant comes across to me as a as a scoundrel he's he's like someone that would bet on the on the other team he would manipulate the market against his own company just for his own personal Fortune he was a tremendous stock manipulator in one episode he made $5 million in one week pushing the stock of one railroad down and the stock of another railroad up and then going back into the original stock Durant had seen railroads being built across Michigan and into Illinois he knew that there was a lot of money to be made but usually it was along the side his whole life with the Union Pacific he really I don't think cared whether it actually got finished he just wanted to make as much money along the side as he could and the people who worked under him knew [Music] that Durant's earlier railroad projects were small potatoes compared to the Union Pacific this new road was the biggest single government funded construction project ever and the 43-year-old Durant wasn't going to miss out he managed illegally to get control of $2.2 Million worth of shares in the Union Pacific installed his own straw man as president and took charge of the [Music] company in 1864 in hopes of getting extra government Aid the doctor distributed $435,000 in cash and A4 million do in bonds among legislators their proxies friends and relatives if you think it safe Congressman Lorenzo deedi sweat wrote to Durant please let me into some purchase of stock will you I will give my personal attention to your interests here The Honorable sweat and his colleagues passed a revised railroad bill in the summer of 1864 the new act doubled the land grants permitted the up and the CP to borrow money in advance of the line build and seated to the railroad company's all coal iron and Precious Minerals found on the granted lands with these new enticements in place Durant set up a separate Corporation a top secret entity called credit mobiler only a few of Durant's special friends were offered stock in the new company the credit mobiler was almost a revolutionary business practice at the time it was the idea of a railroad company being able to borrow money on the land that they didn't even own yet but would if they actually built the railroad that was the first principle the second principle though was the real Center of energy for it and that was the notion of limited liability up until then anybody investing in a company if the company got into trouble that person would be liable for not only what they had in the company but their own personal fortunes their own houses their own property but with this new idea if a company got into trouble the investor would only lose his investment and this was a kind of an insulation that had never been practice practiced in business before the credit mobile year was really formed by the directors of the Union Pacific to do the construction now originally Durant gave the contract to an associate named Herbert hawy what hoxy did was hold the contract for a short period of time sell it to Durant for $10,000 so the credit mobile year would build the road and then charge the Union Pacific in effect Durant was paying himself for building the railroad the hawky contract called for building the railroad up to Plat Valley at $50,000 per mile Peter day was the chief engineer and uh he made the statement that anybody who charged $50,000 for a railroad down the Plaid Valley was nothing but a thief the contract was worth $12.5 million for building the first 247 miles of the Union Pacific Railroad Peter day figured it would cost half that the rest was pure profit but the doctor knew nobody was really watching Congressional oversight was virtually non-existent so Durant's next move was the boldest yet they were being paid by the mile so why not make the line longer so what he did was he took a perfectly good railroad survey and he lengthened it with this tremendous Oxbo shaped route that went out in a a different direction from Omaha and added about a half a million dollars to Durant's pocket in the bargain Peter day resigned in protest but it didn't much matter more than 2 years after Congress had chartered the company the Union Pacific was little more than a paper railroad when the Civil War came to an end in March of 1865 the up had not spiked a single length of track when the railroad's Great champion Abraham Lincoln was assassinated a month later the company still had not laid any iron and on Independence Day 1865 still nothing many in Congress were wondering if they should simply cut losses and withdraw support from the Union Pacific Railroad Thomas C Durant had good instincts for self-preservation and he understood it was now in his interest to start building a railroad suddenly he cared about nothing else he just sent a ver blizzard of telegrams out to the poor people who were working for him out on the line saying hurry up hurry up we are far behind our time what are you doing wrong I can replace you very easily I want more work out of you I will not accept no for an answer and I will not accept failure day after day Durant wired his crew bosses in Nebraska do you or do you not want more men to lay 60 Mi this fall if so what kind if men are not fed well and made comfortable they will not stay see to this what is the matter that you can't lay track [Music] faster for the Central Pacific the earliest work nearest Sacramento had proved the least Difficult by the spring of 1865 the company had received more than $2 million wor the federal and state bonds for track build and had revenues in both passenger and freight service for the 31 Mi between Sacramento and Newcastle kalis Huntington had moved to New York where he could arrange for shipments of iron and raise East Coast money Charlie Crocker had found a construction boss the profane hard driving James Harvey strobridge who could run the mostly Irish immigrant Crews but strowbridge had constant problems finding Dependable men to fill grading and track lading Crews California still had a small population and most laborers preferred work nearer the comfort of town or out in the goldfields they put out hand bills all over Northern California advertising they needed 5,000 workers immediately for good pay they advertised for 5,000 and 200 showed up and they were absolutely desperate they finally had the money money was burning a hole in their pockets and what were they going to do Charlie Crocker suggested to their labor boss James Harvey strobridge let's try some of the Chinese uh from down in the valley and see if they work out strober didn't like this idea he said they can't be good workers they're too weak they're too insubstantial strobridge did not feel that the Chinese were physically able to do the kind of heavy labor that was required especially in the Sierra Nevadas the Rocks the granite you know the moving of this massive material and Charles Crocker said no no they can do it they built the Great Wall they can do it Crocker persuaded him to try 50 and the 50 worked out so they tried another 50 and those 50 worked out so then they hired another 100 and slowly but surely the labor force built up they especially recruited the Chinese they sent out circulars saying you know good jobs in the railroad and uh it attract Ed us we needed the money in the Quang Tong province of China Decades of flood famine war and depression had left much of the population without a decent living many men left home for railroad jobs in America to support their families others left simply to make a new life in a new land I don't think they saw the West as a white country they saw it as a country just a country for anybody and the Chinese wanted a peace they were willing to work for it they wanted a peace for themselves a peace for their [Music] families they were certainly harder workers and more conscientious they didn't get drunk every night and have fights but one of the most interesting things that I think kept them going was just the question of diet if you went to the Irish camps you would find them eating boiled beef and boiled beans and drinking boiled coffee and if you went over to the Chinese youd begin to smell the fertile Aromas of garlic and cuttlefish and and stir-fried pork when they drank they didn't drink from ditches they drank boiled tea and uh they also didn't come down with denter the way the Irish workers did because of this boiled [Music] tea it was at least better than working in China where there was very little food and famine and starvation going on a Sunday meal for the railroad workers was an allow elaborate banquet in their eyes they would have imported foods from China that they were familiar with oers dried Meats they would have pork and chicken and uh Abalone um this was really a magnificent meal [Music] by the turn of 1866 the Central Pacific had 6,000 Chinese immigrants on the payroll from ages 13 to 60 as much as 80% of the CP Workforce was Chinese for $30 a month less bored the men worked 6 days a week 10 to 12 hours a day chopping down trees blasting out Cuts or shoveling in huge fils to even the grave at the imposing Cape Horn Rising above the town of kfax they had to make a ledge where track could be run 1300 ft above the valley [Music] floor the only way to get the railroad line across was to start slow to carve out a narrow shelf just wide enough for a man to walk then over time it could be enlarged until they could get entire cruise out to Chisel away The Cliff face we had cut a very hard rock it had to be cut by hand tediously cut by hand it's hard backbreaking dangerous work they lowered the by ropes probably looping them around trees a couple of times up on the top and they would drill in a foot into this Cliff face and then they would fill it with black powder and attach a fuse and light it and then scramble up those ropes as quickly as they could by Midsummer 1866 track laying Crews were pushing out Beyond kofax 55 Mi east of Sacramento laying 350 iron rails 2500 wooden ties and 10,000 spikes every Mile and that was the easy labor grading remained the bulkiest work up to 500 kegs of black powder a day were spent blasting through Cuts deep ravines had to be bridged by wooden trestles or dirt fill as the crews pushed farther up the western slope of the Sierra Nevada Shale sandstone and cemented gravel began to give way to Granite and the big question loomed could those mountains be [Music] bested out on the Great Plains Thomas C Durant was still in a swivet the union pacificate completed only 40 m of railroad in 1865 and they were the easiest 40 on the line but as the company geared up for the 1866 work season there was no shortage of Labor tens of thousands of Civil War veterans had landed out of work roaming the country anxious to get as far as possible from the scenes of horror they'd witnessed Durant hired as his new chief engineer General Grenville M Dodge Dodge had been a commander for the Army in Tennessee and Georgia and then on the Great Plains he was a confidant of the two most important military men in the country generals ulyses srant and William Tuma Sherman and he had already proved a useful agent to Durant as a union officer Dodge had provided the doctor classified intelligence to Aid his Contraband cotton operation Dodge was probably was as good a chief engineer that is surveyor locating Roots he was as good as Peter Dave but he was nowhere near as honest he was imbued with this overwhelming desire to make money the other man Durant sought that winter was a former Union army cavalry officer named Jack casement Jack and his brother Dan had a reputation in railroad construction on the Philadelphia and Erie before the war casement Crews had once laid three miles of track in a single day but when Durant pushed him to take the track Lane contract Jack said he'd have to check with casement he lived in a democratic household he said and generally his wife outvoted him in fact Frances Frank casement was in a fragile state work and War had kept her husband away from their Paynesville Ohio home nearly five of their seven years of marriage and just weeks before Jack's new job offer the cas's four-year-old Son charlie had died of scarlet fever but like Dodge Jack casement was a man in a hurry con vinced Misfortune could be outrun and Fortune could be run [Music] down casement spent the winter in Omaha overseeing construction of box cars specially outfitted to serve as dormitories on wheels for his track laying Crews waiting for the spring thaw so supplies and iron could be shipped up the Missouri River to up warehouses and trying mightily to hold to the temperance pledge he'd given his wife who remained home in Ohio my dear husband when I go to bed here all alone I think so much about Charlie and I see his little pale face while he lay sick then his little body as he lay in his coffin and in that little mound of Earth I have never missed Charlie so much since he died as I have since you left me my dear wife I love you dearly and I'm first grade but impatient to have the ice go out of the river your it is mighty Lonesome here and I'm impatient to get to work I want to see the things start before I leave here just as soon soon as I get a bar laid I mean to travel home for my true love I love you more than all the world besides my dear husband write to me often how many Lonesome sunds I have had in the past 5 years and I suppose I must expect more if I live this cold weather does not look much like opening up the river does it I am trying to be patient but it is rather hard my dear wife good night dearest the river is beginning to rise Frank I've been working with a few men grading and putting in a Sid trck we will commence track laying next Monday God bless you and keep you happy jack the flat Nebraska Prairie presented little difficulty for up Crews the real obstacles were the people who saw themselves as stewards of the land the northern and southern Cheyenne Indians the Sue and the Arapaho skilled on Horseback and with bow and arrow or rifle these tribes moved by season from field of Plenty to Field of Plenty from hunting ground to hunting ground sustained by the seemingly inexhaustible supply of [Music] Buffalo the Buffalo is a great symbol and great being to the Plaines people because it's really their staff of life and even more than that they figured out how to use a buffalo 52 different ways for Food Supplies War hunting implements things like like that and so the cloes for example are boiled to use as Gloom the hump back is um that part of the Buffalo is really kind of sturdy and so it's used for making Shields the hides uh making a Tepe for example took about 12 to 14 HIDs to do that for many Plains Indian tribes the Buffalo was the center of the natural world following the path of this animal they they learned to respect the potency of nature in its power to give and to take away so when white settlers began streaming across the plains toward gold in California and then nearby Colorado Indians regarded them as a new force of Nature and an increasingly dangerous one these Travelers spread small poox and typhoid ran off Buffalo herds decimated the Indians foraging fields and fouled their water sources by the the time Pacific railroad construction began starvation and disease had racked the Cheyenne the soue and the arapo the white Intruders were changing the land the game was becoming more difficult to find elk and buffalo uh Antelope uh was becoming more difficult to pursue because the people on the wagon trains they also needed food and obviously you had Warriors who were especially Young Warriors who were very upset by this though many of the Plains Indians remained on friendly terms with The anglo-american Travelers the more militant tribes treated them as they would any other rival they robbed and looted wagon trains raided settlements and ranches stole horses mules and cattle on occasion they killed scalped and mutilated their victims peace was fragile settlers rarely tried to distinguish between friend and unfriendly Indians us militia units didn't always recognize a white flag more and more white settlers came and coveted more and more of the land Governor Evans of Colorado territory in 1864 abrogates the treaties with the Plains Indians and then he uh encourages Colorado militias vigilante type militias to go attack and raid the Indian camps and in um 1864 the camp of a Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle was raided and about 140 men women and children of the Cheyenne were badly butchered by these vigilante militias they were clubbed stabbed shot uh accounts of the time talk about Indian women trying to crawl away from the Carnage and being chased down and killed immediate and bloody reprisals followed The Butchery at Sand Creek an army of a thousand Northern Cheyenne arapo and Sue stalked up the plat Valley murdering soldiers and civilians menacing stage lines and wagon trains ripping up miles of telegraph wire and destroying the town of Julesburg Colorado which sat asri the proposed up line but by then Indian leaders understood Dramatics would not slow the steady press of westward migration pawy Warriors read the signs and joined up with the US Cavalry to help protect Western settlers from other Waring parties the more Visionary Cheyenne and Sue leaders like Red Cloud concentrated their efforts North in the Powder River Region where the Boseman Trail threatened to destroy the only good buffalo hunting left to them farther south near the Union Pacific Line their people were simply fighting for their lives the winter of 1865 and 1866 had been a very brutal one it had been colder than usual and the Indian tribes had suffered terribly from famine the US government knew that there was trouble a foot they had scheduled peace talks for June and the tribal leaders were inclined to wait to see what the whites were going to bring to the peace table but they just absolutely could not uh control the younger hote heads who as soon as they could get out onto the planes were going out and um rustling horses and livestock uh to feed their families to uh survive small parties of Union Pacific surveyors were harassed and shot at a few men were even killed and their boss Grenville Dodge was apoplectic sending pleas for help to his old army mate General William tumpa Sherman so the commander of the US Army's Western District headed out to assess the problem for himself they met very few Indians at all when they did meet a few Indians they were very very friendly when they got to Colorado City the delegation came and asked them about protection against the Indians and Sherman's answer was there's no Indian menace around here all you want is the Army station here so it'll make Colorado City prosperous he came to the conclusion in 1866 that the Indian menace was vastly overrated [Music] [Music] h [Music] by the summer of 1866 the casement Crews were a juggernaut in July they built past the 100 mile Mark by Fall past the 100th Meridian Jack cas's men made as much as 3 m in a day fixing into place 300 tons of iron rail in 12 hours time moving down the tracks in the 85 ft long rolling dormitories casement had built casement knew how to manage men he knew how to get a 10 or 11 hour day out of his workers he was very efficient and tough about about moving [Music] forward the model of organization the marshalling of material logistically Etc was done along military lines a lot of the construction workers were Confederate and Union Soldiers used to taking orders and and the discipline that this kind of work required plus you had thousands of poor Irish who just come over after the Potato Famine they'd filled up the teeming cities of the East and and slowly been pushed Westward it was a rough life the days were long the work was hard the Sun Beat Down The Winter Winds howled there was always the threat that there was an Indian band over the next Hillside [Music] well if you're a laborer there there wasn't too much good news they had simple simple Foods boiled beans the equivalent of hard Tac the water often had jardy in it that caused denter they lived in tents and the outfit cars with their births four or five high that you slept in they had very little opportunity for baths or bathing personal hygiene so the uh the stench both within the cars and outside of the cars had to be tremendous you got your two or so do a day in your inadequate meals such as they were and then the you could look forward to the pleasures of Hell on [Music] [Applause] Wheels Hell on Wheels was a town made to carry as the railroad workers moved down the Prairie the entire town could be packed onto flatbed cars or wagons and haul to the next felicitous spot reconstituted and renamed end of track towns sprang up very quickly as the railroad came along many of the buildings were tents maybe four posts in the ground with a canvas top for cover many of the gambling halls and the saloons would operate 24 hours a day and one of the things that settlers mentioned frequently in their letters and journals was the annoyance from the noise of these gambling Halls the saloons people shouting in the night it was very noisy very crowded and very [Music] rough most of the women coming along in that point were entrepreneurs they were prostitutes who were here primarily for the same reason that the men were following this Westward press of Empire which was to make quick money and lots of it and so they would locate themselves wherever there was a fluid population of men with money to spend it cost a man about $10 an hour to trip the light fantastic with those soil tuves and if he had anything left they would drug him and strip him of everything of any value before kicking him into the street immediately in front of Bull's big tent occurred the first murder I ever witnessed in 10 minutes minutes after that shot was fired the excitement had subsided the street was clear the games were in full blast and the Cry of prominade to the bar was issuing from the big tent d o Owen B's big tent was a full service establishment they had almost every kind of gambling game that anyone could desire to play and in the back there were cubicles that were partitioned with canvas for the women to transact business with their customers and then a Dr Allan announced that he had established um offices in the rear of bulls big tent and specialized in the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases so actually you could go to the big tent you could spend an afternoon or evening's diversion catch things that you really did not want to have and hopefully have them take taken care of before you headed back out on the [Music] railroad as winter brought work to a halt in 1866 many railroad workers settled into the lascivious Comforts of the newest end of track Town North Plat Nebraska Jack casement had much to celebrate his Crews had made 265 mi in 1866 and back home in Ohio his wife had given birth to a son but not even that happy news could pull casement from his Pursuit Of Money General Jack decided to stay on in North Plat to make a little extra on side beds that winter he built a boarding house a general store to cash in on his free frighting Privileges and a cattle ranch so he could take a contract to provide beef to his own up work gangs dear Jack be careful of your health and for the sake of our little boy more than for your own sake Beware of the tempter in the form of strong drink my dear wife do come home as soon here it is almost Christmas and I'm still here if I get home on New Year's now I shall feel thankful there's so much to do we want 2 or 300 cows for next summer are building a large ice house have built a good slaughter house and blacksmith shop wash house and Corral so you see we are getting quite a ranch darling be as patient as you can you don't want to see me more than I do you my dear husband God bless if you don't come home and stay with us some this winter you will never know anything more of this baby than you did of your first your wife Frank Jack casement wasn't about to go home not now that America was watching with the North and South reunited the nation had finally turned its attention to the joining of east and west the railroad line was crawling with with correspondents and photographers a new and exotic dat line end of tracks feston newspapers across the country Telegraph wires strung alongside the tracks carried news of the iron Road its Daily Progress and the Future IT promised great indeed will be the Vitality of the Republic when the warm blood from its heart pulsates to the remote extremities this magic key will unlock a world encircling tide of travel Commerce and Christian civilization all that stood in the way of this new Bounty was the road's completion but that would prove more difficult than anyone [Music] imagined in the fall of 1866 as the Central Pacific completed its track to Cisco 92 mil East of Sacramento Chinese work gangs were hurried to Donner's Summit where seven separate tunnels had to be dug the most difficult was number six the summit tunnel November snows were already beginning to blanket the mountains 44 snowstorms hit the summit That season but inside the man-made caves work Contin continued Around the Clock in 38 hour shifts at four separate headings one on the east side one on the west and two in the center where the men had to be lowered by ropes 100 ft down an 8X 12T man-made shaft even with 12 to 15 men drilling at each face and hundreds of barrels of black powder expended daily the Central Pacific Partners figured it would take 15 months to break through the tunnel the summit tunnel was 1659 ft long uh and it's through some of the hardest rock in North America and remember that we're working with hand drills and black blasting powder it's not very efficient takes a lot of human effort and a lot of money to pay for that blasting powder the Central Pacific was built in a foot a day through these tunnels and it's just agonizing for them they recognize that the Pacific Railroad is going to generate revenue from one from Omaha to San Francisco and their portion of that revenue is going to be based on how many miles of track was the track that they built they want to get as far east as possible those mountains are slowing them down meanwhile the Union Pacific has finally gotten organized they've hired this guy casement he could he was bragging that he could build five miles of track a day in his office in New York CIS P Huntington was reading breathless newspaper accounts of case's Rapid Advance with a growing sense of dread if the CP Crews remained stuck in the tunnels too long Huntington figured the Union Pacific would build right by them and all the way into San Francisco four years of work would be for nothing the CP Partners would be ruined Beyond repair the central Pacific's best Hope was a dangerous gamble liquid nitroglycerin Nitro was the most powerful explosive ever made and the least stable in 1867 transportation of Liquid Nitro was illegal in the state of California and for good reason accidental explosions had all been disintegrated a Panama steamer and blown up half a block in downtown San Francisco body parts were found at top buildings hundreds of feet from the blast site but when a British chemist named James Howen told EB Crocker he could mix The Compound on site at the tunnels the CP partner shipped him straight away to the summit Nitro is is it's a very temperamental compound it tends to blow up on its own and and the Chinese had to handle it delicately they had a surprisingly good safety record with this and uh they were able to do more than twice the amount of work with nitroglycerin it blasted more it smoked less it cleared out quicker and they could really start to move on those tunnels construction boss James Harvey strowbridge hired welshmen from Nevada's Hard Rock mines to further speed the work but he was surprised to see the Chinese gangs outd distan the Welsh Crews week after week the Chinese did the most difficult work and the most dangerous and they were paid the [Music] least Californians had suddenly come up with the idea that these Chinese were good workers and so they were being hired away from the Central Pacific the Central Pacific raised uh the wages to $35 a month it wasn't enough this little crew went on strike they were threatened we will fire you if you don't go back to work so they raised their demand to $40 a month and it got around to the other camps and then all of a sudden all of the Chinese camps were on strike so the Central Pacific cut off their food and cut off their supplies strawber and Crocker you know they weren't thinking of the Chinese as human you never thought of the Chinese as having a family never thought of the Chinese having a wife never thought of the Chinese as supporting people uh across the ocean and the Chinese were and they thought well the Chinese can live on a dollar a day it's the white man that really needs the [Music] money after about a week of um running out of food the Central Pacific managers brought uh what looked very much like a posi of of whites up to just make sure that there wasn't any rioting going on up there on the mountain side on this empty mountain side and when these hungry Chinese looked out and they saw this mob of uh deputized whites and uh they realized that there was really nowhere to go they went back to work and they went back to work for $35 a month [Music] from its Inception all that slowed the Union Pacific was bad management and politics the company was chartered by Congress its engineering construction and financing had to have federal government approval more than a few in the capital doubted the Integrity of a company run by Thomas Durant as far back as 1864 a second axis of power was fighting for control of the Union Pacific boardroom that power was chiefly the Ames brothers who had been early investors in the up and early beneficiaries of credit mober [Music] Oaks and Oliver Ames were the sons of a wealthy manufacturer who' made an immense Fortune by supplying the Gold Rush with its shovels and pics and Oaks Ames had a real Civic Spirit he stood for Congress and was elected for Massachusetts during the Civil War and through that he became known to Abraham Lincoln and Lincoln took Oaks Ames aside and said I want you to get involved in this Union specific business if you don't take hold of it no one will and it's not going to get done and if you do this it would be a great service to the country and it would make you the most remembered man of the century by the summer of 1867 the Ames and their Boston Counting house friends had gained controlling interest from Durant and installed Oliver Ames as president the doctor had begun what would become a blizzard of lawsuits against the board but remained as vice president director and major stockholder whether they liked it or not Durant and the ases were in harness together Durant still provided remarkable Drive the am Brothers provided respectability when Oaks sprinkled credit mober stock through Congress he did it quietly what Oaks Ames did was to pass out only 343 shares they were worth uh uh $200 each to members of Congress to influence them in voting for things for the Union Pacific and no one received over a 100 shares of stock it really amounted to nothing but it showed how easy it was to buy the influence of uh representatives and Senators while Congressman Oaks Ames greased the skids in Washington chief engineer Grenville Dodge led the Union Pacific to a remote corner of the Dakota territory in July of 1867 90 Mi north of the only Metropolis of the Rockies Denver Colorado at the intersection of two small Creeks Dodge staked out a new town it was about halfway between Omaha and Salt Lake City a straight shot to the rich coal fields of Western Dakota and the spot where the land begins its gradual rise into the Rockies here would be the roundhouse where westbound trains begin beginning their Ascent took on extra locomotives and where eastbound trains shucked theirs the town would be a Union Pacific Division point with a machine shop and watering tanks a Depot dining room and hotel a brand new military post would set up nearby Dodge named the town Cheyenne and announced that it would one day rival Denver the last little bit was to help drive up the price of lots the Union Pacific was selling off it wasn't going to be like those other Hell on Wheels towns that were going to be there just as long as the track layers were coming in to buy their liquid Refreshments Etc it was going to be a place that was going to endure because the railroad said it was going to endure within a week there were people locating there and within a month there were businesses that were established there there were speculators there were Fly by Night operators that simply wanted to follow the tracks but there were also a number of people who had made some determination that they were going to move their families out to this area and they were going to put down routes and establish themselves All America was watching the railroad's progress and some folks were inspired to hop on the [Music] train anybody traveling to Cheyenne on the railroad in 1867 saw the future shimmering before them railroad workers had dropped off to take up farming along the line in Nebraska their wives and children had followed towns behind the end of tracks were filling in becoming safe for school Mistresses and seamstresses the most adventurous kept heading West toward Dakota territory and the Magic City of the Plains by September of 1867 Cheyenne's population was in the thousands and Rising a newspaper went to press with plenty of advertising columns full of the new businesses setting up on the main streets a Town Council was established and a public school as the up tracks neared Cheyenne the price of a town lot skyrocketed from $600 to [Music] 4,000 here is the city of Cheyenne exclaimed the town's first mayor may she ever prosper and the tribe of Indians after whom she is named be completely exterminated the sentiment it was reported was much applauded up the Plat River Valley the railroad is going up right through the center of this place and um all of these tribes were used to Crossing through this Valley the Buffalo herds which had been in in the millions in the 1840s were being decimated by by uh all of the immigrants going across by the um forces who were trying to get meat for the thousands of railroaders by the late 1800s there is perhaps about 1200 Buffalo altogether we're talking about an animal that was almost erased from this Earth for the Plains Indian tribes it affected their whole scheme of life and understanding of their universe and they saw that their life was being taken away from them there were people coming out on the train that were shooting Buffalo from the train as they were passing through the planes so the a lot of these Indians saw this uh this March of the railroad as uh a far more permanent presence than even the trails and far more threatening than the trails because this demonstrated a great deal more permanence than simply a few people passing through in a covered wagon land Indians begin to realize that they were going to have to do something and to fight for their lands in a way to fight for the Buffalo they're defending their lands I mean anyone would defend their lands their homelands in the summer of 1867 Union Pacific Advance men were being picked off with growing frequency news of dead surveyors bodies punctured with bullets and arrows burned the telegraph wires between Cheyenne and Omaha from Plum Creek Nebraska came the news that Cheyenne Warriors had torn up tracks derailed and looted a train killed an engineer and a Breakman scalped them and set them a fire their charred bodies were soon on display at The Plum Creek Station as was telegraph repair man William Thompson who had escaped alive but skinned in a pale of water at his side was his recently removed scalp after that ugly summer peace conferences were held and Cheyenne and Sue leaders pled their case if they were expected to control their most angry and militant men they would have to give them a chance to feed their families few whites were in sympathy where initially There Was Fear on the part of a lot of people about the possible threats from Indians and from the native population As Time passed that fear became one of almost almost hatred and that's not Universal of course but it was a it was a pretty strong feeling that uh that we've we've got to get rid of these these people we're we're yeah we're trespassing on their lands you might say but uh but uh we have to uh we have to permanently get them out of the way dispose of them Dodge was in favor really of just Exterminating all the Indians just getting rid of them all he kept telling Sherman we need more soldiers out here we have to protect our parties Sherman was interestingly a conciliator at the very beginning he had a lot of feeling for the Indian tribes but when uh relations broke down and reprisals began to happen he came over rather quickly to the the um to the other side of things and really just decided that if these people didn't make way then they just had to be annihilated I have no sympathy with the Red Devils wrote One surveyor May the greedy Crow and dark-winged Raven hover over their silent corpses May the coyote Feast upon their stiff and festering carcasses education and civilization will be satisfied when they cease to be [Music] in New Towns like Cheyenne and laramy where the front lines of Western culture pushed through the march of civilization was no ennobling [Music] procession let's face it cut throw types uh who probably be on wanted posters and post offices today who were busy operating there so if you appr protested that you were short changed or or you're uh someone was cheating at the cards uh they're liable to follow you outside and uh and do bodily harm to you or even kill you lar me tried to mount a town government to seat a town government the Town Council and the mayor resigned after 3 weeks saying the town was so wild it was virtually ungovernable and a number of the um more unruly members of the community took over con Wagner aore uh biged Wilson and some of their cronies it was the consensus of opinion that something had to be done accordingly a vigilance committee was organized and its First Act was the hanging of a boy known as the kid this act of the Vigilante served only to intensify the bitter feeling of the Lawless element and these now threatened openly to burn the town finally the uh respectable people had decided the town had to be brought under control something had to happen and so there was a vigilante sweep through laramy prostitutes and other undesirables were loaded on flat cars in the UN Pacific Railroad and sent off to Rollins the next end of track town which probably wasn't all that wonderful for Rollins but uh others such as uh Wagner Mo and Wilson were hanged and because of the scarcity of trees in laramy at that time finding places to hang people it's bit of a challenge and so Wagner and his cronies were hanged inside a cabin from the rafters and they were also shot I believe before they were hanged so it was a bit of Overkill people wanted to be sure they were rid of Wagner and more and the scourge they were bring to the town early the following day my Chum and I hastened to the Keen log building and viewed the bodies we then returned to the streets and had been there only a short time when our attention was attracted to a body of men coming down the street the party had in their midst a man known as long Steve who was talking excitedly he begged them to let him go boys he said for God's sake let me go and I'll start right down that railroad track and never stop till I get to Omaha they then crossed the street to a telegraph pole which stood near the Union Pacific Railway company's oil house and executed the poor wretch in the presence of a large crowd the hangings made laramy about as safe a town to live in as could be found on the continent W Owen up on Donner's Summit in the summer of 1867 the Central Pacific Crews were still fighting through the summit tunnel the anxious CP Partners already had track laid east of the tunnel out along the trucky River but they couldn't connect the track or collect their ample government subsidy until the tunnel was finished we get to August and the crew down in the western shaft is is working there's a nitroglycerin blast they clear away the smoke and they pull away the rubble and all of a sudden there's a fresh Breeze of cool air coming in at them and they've they've linked the two Western staffs together and there's this tremendous feeling of accomplishment which redoubles their effort in the Eastern pH in three or four weeks later at the end of August they're through on that side for these years past gravitation has been so continually against us wrote Mark Hopkins at last we've reached the summit are on the downgrade and we rejoice in 5 years of construction the Central Pacific had laid just more than 100 miles of tra track the Union Pacific had laid five times that but with the sieras finally conquered Callis P Huntington wired Charlie Crocker that he could Supply him money and iron to lay 350 Mi of track in 1868 could they do it if the union company lay more track than we do I will pay the damage Crocker wired back we will beat the Union Pacific to Salt Lake stick a pin in there in the spring of 1868 on a windy plane 88,200 ft up in the Rocky Mountains 30 Mi west of Cheyenne 530 West of Omaha the Union Pacific Railroad laid rails at the highest point on the Transcontinental line and Thomas Durant shot off a telegram to Central Pacific president Leland Stanford announcing the achievement Stanford wired back his congratulations with a Sly rejoiner may your descent be rapid the effect of the original railroad legislation was just now becoming clear it had made the two companies bitter Rivals this was a zero sum game every dollar gained by one company was a dollar loss to the other and only one company would get the valuable coal fields in Western Wyoming and Eastern Utah I'll be damned Durant had said if I would not prevent the CP from coming more than 200 miles east of California in the nation's capital especially it was beginning to look like the fight would be costly we have Congressman Oaks Ames down in Washington the credit mobilia had just declared a dividend uh it was quite a high dividend and um the congressman got got wind of it and this almost Anonymous man from Massachusetts walks out to his desk in in um the Hall of Congress and all of a sudden he is just absolutely surrounded by congressmen and Senators looking to buy into this uh credit mobiler to get whatever they could for free if possible or perhaps to be loaned the purchase price and uh he couldn't keep up with it these were men who would be voting on Railroad legislation and uh yet they were becoming stockholders in the very company that was getting the railroad built call us be hunting was passing out cash and stocks too in hopes of winning the rights to the wasach coal Fields east of Salt Lake if $100,000 will get the line located he wrote to Hopkins I shall get it done Central Pacific Engineers were at pains to keep the supply trains running through the Deep Sierra snows high in the California mountains Carpenters were constructing 37 Mi of wooden snow sheds using 65 million linear feet of [Music] [Music] lumber the Central Pacific had prided itself on its workmanship I mean you you go up in the sieras even today and you look at those retaining walls and those culs that were built by hand by the Chinese and they're still doing their job and they're still objects of [Music] beauty but when the railroad got down in 1868 into Nevada the real Rush was on make it cheap Huntington told his Partners when you can make any time in the construction by using wood instead of iron for colberts ETC do it and if we should now and then have a piece of the road washed out for want of a culber we could put one in therea Huntington kept saying build faster build with the the devil behind you and Heaven ahead of you build build build speed was never easy for the Central Pacific everything from locomotives to rails to spikes still had to be built at Iron Works in the East and then sailed around the tip of South America to the San Francisco docks loaded onto steamboats and shipped up the Sacramento River schedules rarely held much needed spikes rails and rail chairs sat under becalm sails a locomotive sank in the Hudson River parts of another in San Francisco Bay rail fell overboard into the Sacramento River shipments that made it to the Sacramento docks were packed onto trains for a perilous ride forward to the work [Music] crew by 1868 51 CP locomotives were pulling freight trains and Passenger cars on only one track the Central Pacific used a standard system known as timetable and train order operations conductors carried timetables but they had to wait for telegraph orders at every station before they could proceed with their 50 ton locomotives pulling hundreds of tons worth of [Music] iron racing up and down steep grades trying to make up lost time Engineers could never be sure what lay around the next curve [Music] the Central Pacific and Union Pacific were both what is called Dark territory there are no Wayside signals and these written train orders on tissue paper blanks called by the crews flimsies because they're on flimsy paper are all that keeps trains apart you send a train out it's supposed to be at such and such a place at 2:00 but you have a hot box or a flat wheel and uh it could take you three or four hours to split the Train move your part of the train down to where you can leave it safely and then go back for the car that has to be removed and meantime the rest of the train is left on the track uh nobody knows it's there it might take a half a mile or a mile to stop one of those trains the engineer could try to reverse the motion of the engine and use that as a braking Force but the main braking force was the hand brakes you didn't have air brakes in those days so you'd have to tie each brake on each car by hand when the engineer whistled one whistle signal that means down brakes then the uh brakman on top of the cars would start tying down the handbrakes and a brakman was start from the engine end and the braking will start from the Caboose and they'll be working the way down each car tightening the brakes the space between cars is uh roughly 5 or 6 ft and you're liable to slip especially in the winter time and if he slips probably the whole train will will crash and if the locomotive boiler any of its pipes were broken which they would be in a crash the Liv steam could cook the the meat off the bones of a person in just a matter of half a minute in one 3-month span there were four separate crashes on the Central Pacific Line these wrecks crippled new locomotives wasted materials crushed and burned engineers and breaken as the pace of construction quickened the toll increased for both companies the nation's great railroad project devoured lives iron workers making rails in Pennsylvania dropped dead from the heat of blast furnaces at the tunnels near Donner Summit and across Nevada hundreds maybe even thousands of Chinese workers died while building the line we do know that in 1870 there were six car loads of coffins that were going to be shipped back to China and the the cost of the freight was $10 per coffin beyond that we don't know I wonder about their names and I probably wonder about the names till the day I die the bodies were were just buried by the wayside and later you know some of them removed and went back to China and unfortunately not one name uh the railroads didn't take names they only took [Music] bodies on the Union Pacific side the surveyors out front had it worst in his personal diary of the summer of 1868 surveyor a an Ferguson noted 45 men killed by Indians six drowned one construction worker are killed falling off a bridge 10 shot dead in robberies or fights and one killed by a stray bullet while sitting in his tent that summer was the most brutal yet for the men on both sides of the line 3 years and 680 miles into construction and the up was finally running into the sort of obstacles the CP had faced in the sieras in the mountains of Eastern Utah four tunnels had to be dug one through black Limestone and another through Quartzsite the tunneling and Grading work in Utah was contracted out to Brigham Young and his Mormon followers behind them the Union Pacific track layers were choking in Western Wyoming's Alkali desert temperatures Rose to more than 100° by day and fell below freezing at night mules died by the dozens left to rot track side as the crews moved on 500 M West Charlie Crocker's Central Pacific Crews were working their way across Nevada's 40m desert where they had to haul thousands of gallons of water a day by train to men and livestock curves still had to be bent by hand literally hammered into an arc but the the CP had finally learned to build fast in a single day out in that Nevada desert Crocker's Crews laid more than 6 miles of rail speed mattered more than ever now big money was at stake and with the entire nation looking on so were bragging rights when casement got news of Crocker's sixmile day he went in one better laying down seven miles of rail in a single shift after 3 years of exhausting labor Jack casan was pushing his men harder than [Music] ever my dear husband I had hoped that tonight the anniversary of our wedding would bring me a love letter from you but I am disappointed the fourth week is now passing that you have been away and not a letter yet my dear wife what is the matter dear we are bothered to get material to keep us going we are straining every nerve to get into Salt Lake Valley before the heavy snow falls God bless and keep you happy dear husband Jack expect that you are bending all your energies to outdo everybody else and to do the biggest thing that was ever heard of there are a few things that pay in this world and I hope that is one of them how glad I shall be when the last mile is laid your wife Frank at the turn of 1869 surveyors graders and track layers were all nearly spent and the end was not yet in sight the issue of meeting point was still unsettled and as such unsettling to both ends of the track when Callis Huntington met with Oliver Ames and Granville Dodge in Washington to try to fix a meeting point it devolved into a shouting match Ames offered a point in the middle I'll see you damned first Huntington replied and suggested the mouth of Weber Canyon am stormed out grading Crews from the companies had already gone past one another and were working side by side leveling two separate lines sometimes 100 ft apart but only one company would be paid for its work the Union Pacific especially was desperate for cash both the casement and the Mormon Crews were working without pay meanwhile credit mober was paying out huge sums to Durant the Ames brothers and other stockholders including the wife of Union Pacific's grasping chief engineer Grenville Dodge Mrs Dodge owned a 100 shares of stock in the credit mobile year and the dividend was absolutely enormous the credit mobile year over an 18-month period paid 341 so if the stock was worth $200 a share and 100 shares she got a dividend of almost $70,000 they're paying themselves all this money and the Union Pacific has no money left a malodorous scent was beginning to surround the the entire project nearly everybody involved was on the take or in the till from the former up president who was black mailing company directors to the clerks on the line who took bribes to look the other way when Freight arrived lighter than its we in government inspectors were rolling over for the companies when they called the central Pacific's construction through Nevada worthy of a great National work Huntington wired Charlie Crocker I think you must have slept with [Music] them and if construction on the CP side was shoty the Union Pacific shortcuts were criminal three separate up Bridges collapsed under their own weight before a locomotive had a chance to test them the truth is oine the New York Herald there is cheating on the grandest scale in all these railroads many in Congress were in high dgon especially those who hadn't been cut in on credit mob stock with some of the press turning sour the federal government even delayed payments to the cash strapped Union Pacific Company by April of 1869 the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific knew they had better settle their hash before Congress got punitive the two companies finally got together and uh it was Grenville Dodge and kalis Huntington in in a meeting place in which uh there was a lot of stalking out and slamming doors but they finally decided that what they would do would be that the two railroads would meet in the Promontory mountains at a place called Promontory Summit the most godforsaken place that you can imagine kalis P Huntington had been forced to give up his dream of owning the was coal fields and he wasn't happy about it for CP construction boss Charlie Crocker 8 years of work and worry were finally coming to an end but Charlie had one last thing to prove to the Union Pacific work Cruise [Music] finally on almost the last day the Central Pacific held off they got organized and they built 10 miles of track in one day and in New York Huntington wrote back said well I read in the newspaper that they built 10 miles of track in one day it was an amazing thing I wish they would have done it when it made a difference [Music] in early May 1869 the competing companies neared the North End of the Great Salt Lake and the day of completion [Music] company VIPs and government dignitaries traveled by private car to Promontory while the track layers literally worked their way to the Finish Line stringing the telegraph wires as they [Music] went on the morning of May 10th 1869 under Brilliant Blue Skies all gathered at a recently tossed together settlement in Northern Utah and the whole country listened in for news of [Music] promontory the rails are almost touching at this point and the telegraph wires are going from Promontory Summit out across the deserts across the Plains and the mountains and they're going to the settled places San Francisco Sacramento New York Boston Washington and it's as if there's a gigantic electrical circuit linking the nation together for the first time in [Music] history in every city and town in the United States it was like there was a collective indrawn breath taken [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] when the signal flashed across the United States a cannon faced over the Pacific and one over the Atlantic went off simultaneously warning the world what was about to happen church bells and fire alarms in every city and town in the ne went off crowds cheered fireworks went off Cades began thousands of people kneeling in prayer it was as if the entire country was suddenly linked at this [Music] moment is finished wrote a Union Pacific surveyor who was there that day this Great and Mighty Enterprise that spans a continent with iron and unites two oceans the future is coming and fast too [Music] [Music] much of the original transcontinental railroad line was so poorly built that both companies were forced to begin Shoring it up right away but even that first rickety Road had done its [Music] job by 1880 the two railroad companies were hauling $50 million of freight every year much of it between Europe and Asia nearly 200 million acres of land had been taken under the plow by immigrants coming West on the railroad the tattered remains of the Plains Indian tribes had been shoved under reservations well North for those involved in the railroads making the results were not always happy ones for the Chinese the thanks of a Grateful Nation included a series of vicious laws that blocked them from citizenship the Mormons never did receive the money owed them by the Union Pacific and though Frank caseman got her husband home for a time he soon left Ohio to chase Fame and Fortune building a new Road [Music] when the railroad company's Financial shortcuts became an issue in the 1872 elections Congress embarked on dramatic and well publicized hearings kalis Huntington and his Partners were little help in the investigation they were sorry they said but they'd thrown away all their records Thomas C Durant has always slipped the news even as he was testifying he was buying up more than 700,000 acres of land in Upstate New York the developing a new railroad Congressman Oaks Ames who had dealt credit Mobile stock to his fellow legislators became the lone scapegoat Oaks Ames was tossed out of the Congressional club and virtually everyone else got off Scot free Ames retired in disgrace went back to Massachusetts and he was dead within a matter of weeks I think just of accumulated griefs over the whole Scandal the scandals are important the corruption what it says about American society what it says about what happened to the Plains Indian tribes but on the other side of this coin is how this did bind the nation together and it signaled a new era it brought so much change at a rapid accelerating rate it meant changing the lives of Indian people white settlers even the game in the area in a way it was it was the mark of an era an era that uh May perhaps even National completeness it was an enormous event for the country a journey that might have taken 6 months by wagon could now be accomplished in a matter of a week or two goods became available readily available towns sprang up along the railroad you see A Whole New World opening up at a critical time in America's development the railroad now allowed ideas to go from the east coast and the West Coast newspapers stories uh novels so it's not just Goods it's not just products it's not just ideas it's a whole in a sense Revolution it did connect the East with the West Coast it did in essence uh provide us with a uh with a continental culture and it really did bind the country together [Music] there's more about the railroad at American Experience online learn more about Native American tribes in the west and tour the railroads route today with the Film Production Team all this and more at PBS online pbs.org America Online keyword PBS I [Music] American experience has made possible by the Alfred PE loan Foundation to enhance public understanding of the role of Technology the foundation also seeks to portray the lives of the men and women engaged in scientific and technological Pursuit Liberty Mutual Insurance is a proud supporter of the American experience and by 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