Central Pacific Railroad

In July 1860 the engineer Theodore Judah reached Donner Pass and recognized it as an ideal location for a railroad through the Sierra Nevada. In November that year Judah met Collis P. Huntington, and six men organized as the first board of directors of the Central Pacific Railroad Company.⁠[1]

The Central Pacific Railroad was incorporated in 1861 by four California merchants later known as the “Big Four”: Collis P. Huntington, Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins and Charles Crocker. Judah had first conceived and surveyed the line and secured the group’s financial backing. In October 1861 he returned to Washington, D.C., with survey maps to lobby for federal appropriations.⁠[2][3][1]

On July 1, 1862, Abraham LincolnAbraham LincolnAbraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th president of the United States (1861–1865). Born to a frontier farming family in Kentucky, he had less than a year of formal schooling, taught himself law, and served in the Illinois legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives before winning the presidency as the Republican candidate in 1860. During the Civil War he preserved the Union, issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and pushed the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery through Congress. He was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre in Washington on April 14, 1865, and died the next day.Open the full entry signed the Pacific Railway Act, under which the Central Pacific would build the western part of the transcontinental railroad and the Union Pacific was created to build the eastern part, with land and loans granted to both. Money was paid for each completed mile, but as loans to be repaid rather than grants; the land grants were alternating sections totaling 10 square miles, increased to 20 square miles by the Act of 1864.⁠[4][3]

On January 8, 1863, Leland Stanford broke ground at the Central Pacific’s ceremony in Sacramento, and track-laying proceeded eastward from there. The company spiked its first rails to ties on October 26 that year. Amid tensions with the board, Judah sailed east in the summer of 1863 to seek new investors; he died in New York City on November 2, 1863.⁠[1][2]

On October 8, 1864, the company became the Central Pacific Railroad of California.⁠[3]

Managers including Charles Crocker began considering Chinese labor in 1864, and the company first hired an initial group of 50 Chinese workers; in late January 1865 Crocker persuaded construction superintendent James Harvey Strobridge to try Chinese workers. The company went on to hire thousands of Chinese laborers, many recruited from farms in Canton.⁠[5][1][2]

Golden Spike National Historical Park estimates that roughly 10,000 Chinese laborers helped build the railroad and that more than 1,000 died during its construction, though no accurate figure exists; the PBS timeline puts Chinese workers at up to 80 percent of the workforce. They were paid on average 30 percent less than white workers and paid for their own lodging, food, supplies and equipment.⁠[5][1]

Bloomer Cut was finished in April 1865, and in late summer that year workers began hand-drilling tunnels in the Sierra Nevada. The company built 15 tunnels through the mountains, including the 1,659-foot Summit Tunnel, which took 16 months and was completed on August 28, 1867. In the winter of 1867 James Howden began making nitroglycerin on site for the Central Pacific.⁠[4][1]

On June 24, 1867, Chinese workers stopped work on a 30-mile section between Cisco and Truckee, California, demanding higher wages, a workday reduced from 11 to 10 hours and shorter shifts in the tunnels. The strike lasted about a week, ending after the company cut off food and supplies to their camps.⁠[5]

On May 9, 1868, the Central Pacific sold its first lots in Reno, NevadaNevadaNevada is a state in the western United States bordered by Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, and California; its capital is Carson City. It was admitted to the Union on October 31, 1864, as the 36th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 3,104,614.Open the full entry, and on June 18 the first passenger train crossed the Sierra Nevada into Reno. In August 1868 Brigham Young provided Mormon laborers for the company’s grading work in the UtahUtahUtah is a U.S. state bordered by Idaho to the north, Wyoming to the northeast, Colorado to the east, Arizona to the south and Nevada to the west, with its capital at Salt Lake City. It was admitted to the Union on January 4, 1896, as the 45th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 3,271,616 residents.Open the full entry desert.⁠[1]

On April 28, 1869, the Central Pacific laid 10 miles and 56 feet of track in a single day, beating the Union Pacific’s record by almost two miles; at least 400 Chinese laborers worked behind the eight Irish track layers.⁠[5]

On May 10, 1869, the Central Pacific and Union Pacific lines met at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory, completing the first transcontinental railroad in the United States; eight Chinese men moved the final rail into position. The golden spike ceremony began at noon with about 600 people present, and the Central Pacific’s locomotive Jupiter attended. The Central Pacific had built 690 miles of line from Sacramento.⁠[5][4]

In June 1870 the Central Pacific merged with the Western Pacific Railroad, the San Francisco and Alameda Railroad and the San Francisco and Oakland Railroad to form the Central Pacific Railroad Co.; on August 22, 1870, it consolidated with the California & Oregon Railroad, the San Francisco, Oakland & Alameda Railroad and the San Joaquin Valley Railroad to form a new corporation of the same name.⁠[3]

On March 17, 1884, a new Southern Pacific Company was incorporated under a special KentuckyKentuckyKentucky is a U.S. state bordered by Illinois, Indiana and Ohio to the north, West Virginia and Virginia to the east, Tennessee to the south and Missouri to the west; its capital is Frankfort and its largest city is Louisville. It entered the Union on June 1, 1792, as the 15th state and the first state west of the Appalachian Mountains, and had a population of 4,505,836 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry charter to serve as a holding company. On April 1, 1885, the Central Pacific was leased to the Southern Pacific Company. In June 1899 the company was reorganized as the Central Pacific Railway, a name it kept until 1959.⁠[2][3]

On June 30, 1959, the Central Pacific Railway merged with the Southern Pacific Railroad.⁠[3][6]

On September 11, 1996, the Southern Pacific merged with the Union Pacific.⁠[6]

Union Pacific: Official website: https://www.up.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[6]

Golden Spike National Historical Park: Official website: https://www.nps.gov/gosp/ (opens in a new window).⁠[5]