By Patrick Allitt, Emory University
All kinds of horrific technical difficulties confronted the railroad builders who were working on building the first transcontinental railroad. For example, how did one get a locomotive across the Missouri River? How does one feed an enormous crew of railroad builders when they’re far out on the Plains beyond the line of settlement? And, on top of it all, the workers were being attacked by the Indians.
Crossing the Missouri River and Other Challenges
The very first locomotive attempt to cross the Missouri River had been tried back in 1859, by one of the abortive first attempts to build a pre-war railway. According to an eyewitness, they had to wait until the river froze and take the locomotive across on the ice, not knowing whether or not the ice would break and the locomotive would be lost.
Another issue that had to be overcome was of feeding an enormous crew of railroad builders who were far out on the Plains, beyond the line of settlement. One thing they did was to hire hunters.
The reason that William Cody was known as Buffalo Bill was because one of his first jobs was as a buffalo hunter for one of the railroad building companies. He’d kill buffalo, and bring in buffalo meat for the workers to eat. They also took their own herds with them, beef cattle that could be slaughtered and eaten by the work crews.
Indian Attacks
Another problem they faced was attacks by the Indians. This was Indian country, the Great Plains, and the men who were at the greatest risk were the surveyors, the men who actually went out ahead of the construction crews, usually in small numbers, to stake out the exact line that the track was going to follow.
Very often, groups of Indians would tear out the surveyors’ stakes, and if they could catch them, they’d attack and kill the surveyors. In June of 1867, for example, several of the surveyors were killed and scalped by a raiding party of the Cheyenne Indians.
This is a transcript from the video series A History of the United States, 2nd Edition. Watch it now, on Wondrium.
Building Tracks in the Sierra Nevada
Meanwhile, the Central Pacific Company, on the other side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, faced horrific difficulties as well. The workmen on that side were mainly from China—Chinese work gangs that had been contracted by one of the principals of the Central Pacific Railroad, Leland Stanford. He was one of the four owners of this project.
Soon after getting out of Sacramento and crossing the central valley of California, they got into the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas, and there was no low way across the mountains. They were going to have to build it very high, probably 7,000 feet above sea level.
As railways can’t climb steep gradients, so the engineering of the track into the Sierra Nevadas had to be very intricate, and it required a lot of curves and a lot of the cutting of embankments and the building of big bridges. They cut down giant redwood trees as they were going through some of the most heavily forested areas, and had to blast out the stumps with blasting powder because they were so huge.
Building Summit Tunnels
Worst of all was the job of building the summit tunnels through very, very hard granite, and this was almost entirely done by groups of men wielding hammers and chisels. The technique is called ‘double-jacking’. One man held the chisel, and the other man hit it as hard as possible with a sledgehammer. The chisel holder moved it slightly, it was hit again, moved it slightly more, and it was hit again. Gradually, one chipped a hole into the rock face.
When one had made a series of these holes, they filled each of them with blasting powder, lit the fuses, retired to a safe distance, and wait for the charges to go off.
A Dangerous Task
It’s a dangerous business, because sometimes one of the charges wouldn’t go off, and when someone came back to clear away the rubble, they could set off a delayed explosion. That was one of the causes for the very, very high death rate among the Chinese work crews on the line.
This was before the invention of dynamite, which was a much more powerful and effective explosive, but it was in the early days of nitroglycerin, a liquid explosive, and there were some hair-raising experiments with that. It’s volatile, and as it gets too hot, it sometimes explodes prematurely, so that was very dangerous, too. The granite was so hard that sometimes progress was only about one foot per day of work. No wonder it took three years for the whole job to be completed.
Common Questions about Building the Transcontinental Railroad
The reason that William Cody was known as Buffalo Bill was because one of his first jobs was as a buffalo hunter for one of the railroad building companies. He’d kill buffalo, and bring in buffalo meat for the workers to eat.
Surveyors were the men who went out ahead of the railway construction crews, usually in small numbers, to stake out the exact line that the track was going to follow.
As railways can’t climb steep gradients, so the engineering of the track into the Sierra Nevadas had to be very intricate; it required a lot of curves and a lot of the cutting of embankments and the building of big bridges.
