Building the Rails

 Unlike the steamboats that followed routes of nature, railroads were man-made routes.  Western railroads made settlements wherever they were laid along those routes.  Where the railroad went, so did the people.  As one traveler recorded in 1856, "the prairies and the railroads were made for each other.  For hundreds of miles you didn't need to do anything but raise the turf and lay the rails...in one level unwavering line your road passes through the plain."

The technology of progress and haste defined the Western rails.  Great prizes were received for the first to complete the railroad as in the building of the first transcontinental railroad.  Under the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862, the Central Pacific Railroad was to build eastward from California to join tracks with the Union Pacific in Nevada.  However, the act was amended by Central Pacific lobbyists which allowed both railroads to build as far as they could until they met - with the reward of between $16,000 and $48,000 for each additional mile laid.

The first transcontinental railroad went from an engineering project to a race in which the construction practices of the competitors became a national scandal.  The Credit Mobilier Scandal came to light in 1872 and involved the illegal manipulation of contracts by the Union Pacific Railroad and the Credit Mobilier construction company.  An extensive inquiry was made into charges of bribery when the head of Credit Mobilier gave stock to members of Congress in exchange for construction favors.  Nothing definite could be proved and the matter was dropped, but not before the scandal was the hottest news of the time.

Next time...Construction Practices

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Today in Pioneer History: "On September 16, 1893, the largest land rush in history begins with more the 100,000 people pouring into the Cherokee strip of Oklahoma to claim valuable land that had once belonged to Native Americans.  With a single shot from a pistol, the mad dash began and the pioneers on horseback and in carriages raced to stake their claim of the best acres.

Who Wants to Work on That?

Charles Crocker, former dry-goods merchant, was an outspoken, in-your-face kind of guy, and President of the Central Pacific Railroad.  A practical man, he was a hands-on president who didn't take to budget and plans of the financial side of things.  He wanted to be in the thick of the construction action, sharing in the dangers of rock slides, avalanches, and below-zero temperatures that killed many a worker.  Crocker acted like a field marshal, rally troops, plotting strategies and supervising the battles against the elements.

Crocker's biggest problem was the lack of labor.  With the lure of silver and gold in Nevada, why would any man endure back-breaking work for $35 a month when across the mountain fortunes were to be had for less work?  So workers stayed just long enough to get a free ride to the head of the line before taking off across the Sierras to Nevada.

Once the construction reached the Sierra mountains themselves, the dangerous and difficult work was more demanding and the Irishmen, who made up most of the labor force, refused to continue.  Crocker decided that California's Chinese population would be a perfect solution to his problem since they lived in shantytowns as servants, laundymen, and peddlers. 

In early 1865, Crocker's construction boss, James Strobridge, was authorized to hire these men.  He refused, stating that the white workers would walk off the job in force and refuse to work with the Chinese.  He also didn't think the physically smaller Asians could do the job of breaking granite, blasting through the wooded areas, or laying rails and spikes.  Crocker argued that the ancestors of these men had built the Great Wall of China for Heaven's sake!  At that Strobridge relented.

Next time...The Experiment
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Today in Pioneer History: "On May 10,  1869,  the presidents of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads meet in Promontory, Utah, and drive a ceremonial last spike into a rail line that connects their railroads. This made transcontinental railroad travel possible for the first time in U.S. history. 

Western Railroad Monopoly

The route through the Sierra Nevada was built by Charles Crocker's "coolies and whites", but even by then the partners had bigger plans.  By 1868 they had acquired the Southern Pacific Railroad Company for a rail and shipping monopoly on the West Coast.  The two railroads met in Promontory, Utah in 1869.  The tracks extended around the San Francisco Bay area, through the San Joaquin Valley with the "Big Four" building their own lines and buying up smaller railroads until all rail traffic in California belonged to them.

The Southern Pacific reached eastward, building and buying lines in Arizona, Texas, and Louisiana, reaching New Orleans in 1883.  By 1885 they had became the "Big Three" when Hopkins died in 1878, and they merged the Southern and Central Pacific Railroads.  Another railroad, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, reached the Pacific Ocean as well, but had to pay to run its trains on the tracks of the Southern Pacific.

The Southern Pacific opened southern California to settlers, provided services to lumbermen, wheat farmers, ranchers and farmers.  A rancher in the San Joaquin Valley said of the railroad when asked how he improved his cattle, "I crossed them on a Southern Pacific locomotive." 

Many did not think the intentions of the Southern Pacific all that good...they complained loudly of ruthless business practices and monopoly freight rates charged by Huntington and his associates. 
San Francisco newspapers constantly criticized the "Big Three" for their iron rule over business and politics in California.

Huntington died in 1900, the last of the "Big Four" to do so.  He remained defiant to the last that what he and his partners did was good for the people.

Next time...The Union Pacific
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On April 26, 1798, James Beckwourth, one of only a handful of early mountain men to emerge from the system of slavery, is born in Fredericksburg, Va. In 1824, he joined William Ashley’s third and most arduous fur-trapping expedition to the Rocky Mountains. Beckwourth received a crash course in the dangers of mountain life, just barely managing to avoid death by freezing, starvation, and Indian attacks. Despite the risks, Beckwourth enjoyed being a mountain man, and he spent the next several years as a free trapper.

Final Two of Big Four

Collis Huntington said of Leland Stanford, "a good businessman, and a clean man in all respects."  Stanford had a rather easy start in California  in 1852 with his two brothers who owned a grocery and mining supply store in several gold camps.  The son of a tavern owner, Stanford was born in 1824 in New York, near Albany.  He and his brothers sold cut wood to Mohawk and Hudson Railroad.  He studied law at age 20 after being somewhat of a dubious student, and after three years was admitted to the bar.  Stanford married Jane Lathrop in 1849 and moved to Wisconsin where he practiced law until his office burned down. In 1852 he joined his brothers in their prosperous California business. 

Stanford was a very deliberate man and entered politics and became governor of California in 1861.  His only child died at age 15.  Stanford founded Stanford Junior University in Palo Alto in memory of his son in 1885.  After Stanford died in 1893, his widow used his wealth to support Sanford University.

The final New Yorker of the Big Four, Charles Crocker, was born in Troy in 1822, the son of a saloon owner.  His father and brothers went to Indiana for farmland and 14 year old "Bull" Crocker was left in charge of his mother and sister at home.  Crocker worked on the Hudson River ferry and in the Renasseler and Santiago Railroad Station.  After the family joined his father in Indiana, Charles left home and went west, joining a wagon train bound for California in 1850. There Charles tried mining and opened a dry goods store in Sacramento in 1852.  His store burned down also, but Crocker rebuilt it and prospered.

When Theodore Judah brought his railroad vision to the "Big Four", Crocker was enthusiastic.  Charles was known to his partners as a hard-drinking, profane and "bull-voiced" man - but they recognized his value to them.  When the problems of building the Central Pacific seemed insurmountable, he was ready, willing and able to take charge.

Next time...The Partnership Prospers
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On April 23, 1859, William Byers distributes the first newspaper ever published in the frontier boomtown of Denver, beating a rival publisher by a mere 20 minutes.  In Byers’ case, his competitor was the Cherry Creek Pioneer. Byers set to work on the first edition of his newspaper shortly after he arrived in Denver in March, working with a handpress in the attic of a local saloon.

Huntington and Hopkins

The "Big Four: of the Central Pacific Railroad were all easterners who had gone to Sacramento during the Gold Rush days.  They grew wealthy, not by panning for gold, but by selling supplies to miners.  They were ruthless and tightfisted, with visions of turning the dream of a railroad into a reality.

The main man in the railroad vision was Collis Porter Huntington, a Connecticut born Yankee, son of a village tinker and a talent with the ax, and a hot temper.  He left home in 1839, hiring out as a farm hand for a year before he moved back to New York with a mere $84 in his pocket.  There he opened a store with his brother until the news of the Gold Rush called him west.  With a supply of groceries and whiskey he boarded a ship for Panama and on to California.

After one day with the pick and shovel, he opened a tent in Sacramento selling supplies to miners.  In 1855 he and a partner opened Huntington and Hopkins Hardware, becoming one of the more prosperous in California. 

Mark Hopkins was the oldest of the "Big Four", born in Hudson, New York, in 1813.  The Hopkins family moved to Michigan when Mark was 12, but he returned to New York four years later and became a store clerk before becoming a partner in the law firm of Hopkins and Hughes.  Hopkins sold his part of the business in 1849 and left for California.  There he opened a grocery store in Placerville in 1850. 

Mark was a hard-bargainer and when he was introduced to Collis Huntington, they had a lot in common.  Huntington said of Hopkins, "I never thought anything finished until Hopkins looked at it, which was praise enough." 

In 1856-1857, Huntington and Hopkins met two other men from upstate New York - Leland Stanford and Charles Crocker...

Next time...The Remaining Two of the Big Four
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Today in Pioneer History: "On April 19, 1976, A Wichita, Kansas commission votes not to rehire policeman Wyatt Earp after he beats up a candidate for county sheriff.  A Wichita commission decided that Wyatt’s violent behavior was unacceptable and did not rehire him as a police officer. As the town newspaper conceded, 'It is but justice to Earp to say he has made an excellent officer,' but the young lawman had to learn to control his passions and play the political game."

An Engineering Visionary

By 1860 young engineer, Theodore Judah, had solved the problem debated for so long in Congress of how to get the railroad through the Sierras by way of the Donner Pass.  He envisioned a route with several tunnels through the mountains.

Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1826, Theodore Dehone Judah was the son of Rev. Henry Judah, pastor of St. Paul's Church in Troy, New York where the family moved when Theodore was just seven years old.  He was a withdrawn boy and at 11 years old was enrolled in Rensselear Polytechnic Institute in 1837.  A professor there by the name of Amos Eaton was an early railroad enthusiast at a time most people thought the railroad was just a silly fad.  Judah was strongly influenced by the professor in his career.

Judah left college after two years to become a surveyor's assistant on the railroad where he honed his engineering skills.  While working on a job in Massachusetts, he met the daughter of the wealthy John J. Pierce.  Anna and Theodore were married in 1847 and moved to the Niagara Falls area of New York where he worked as an engineer for the Buffalo and New York railroad line. 

Judah became a enthusiast  of a rail line to the Pacific even before he moved to California in 1854 where he was to build the Sacramento Valley Railroad.  There Judah become obsessed with the Sierra Nevada and began his study on how to build a transcontinental route to the East.

When he found the answer he and his investors - Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins, and Collis Huntington, known as the Big Four - organized plans for the Central Pacific Railroad.   Judah avoided mention of a transcontinental railroad but he did point out the profits to be had from a railroad through the Donner Pass to Nevada mining camps.  In 1861, the Central Pacific Railroad Company was founded with Judah as chief engineer. 

After a trip via the Panama Railroad back to Washington, DC to lobby for government aid for his railroad, Judah died of yellow fever in 1863 with his railroad only in its infancy.

Next time...Building across America
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On April 9, 1859,  a 23-year-old  Missouri youth named Samuel Langhorne Clemens receives his steamboat pilot’s license. During his time as a pilot, he picked up the term “Mark Twain,” a boatman’s call noting that the river was only two fathoms deep, the minimum depth for safe navigation. When Clemens returned to writing in 1861, working for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, he wrote a humorous travel letter signed by “Mark Twain” and continued to use the pseudonym for nearly 50 years.