Of the many daunting construction accomplishments of the Railroad Chinese, boring the Summit Tunnel occupies the apex of them all, not just in geographic location but in difficulty, too, because of its length, the weather, and the stubbornness of the rock. It was the most imposing obstacle to getting through the Sierra. Located at the Sierra crest and paralleling Donner Pass, the tunnel eventually stretched 1,659 feet, almost a third of a mile, or more than five football fields in length. It was sixteen feet wide, twenty-three feet high, and, at its deepest, 124 feet below the surface. Adding to the challenge, the tunnel sloped thirty feet in elevation going west to east. It took more than two years of constant work to excavate and lay tracks. Chinese worked in it and other tunnels simultaneously.
The company had workers begin construction on the tunnel in the fall of 1865, but early snow stopped the effort. After warmer temperatures made work possible again, Railroad Chinese resumed their effort and attacked the tunnel’s two end points, the west and east portals. Because progress would have measured just an inch or two per day with the use of nothing but hammers and chisels, workers used blasting powder to crack the rock and then remove it. Considerable variation in skills, experience, and ability distinguished the many Railroad Chinese, but only the best among them worked at Summit Tunnel. Hundreds of them became the company’s elite soldiers.
Thirty to forty men constituted a gang that worked under a white supervisor at each portal. In turn, the gang was divided into multiple teams of three. One member of the team would locate a seam, crack, or crevasse in which to start a hole and then position a three-, five-, or six-foot-long steel pole drill that had a flat, flared tip. The two other team members, wielding eight-pound sledgehammers, pounded the top of the drill. The bit would then be rotated a quarter turn to go deeper into the stone. Bang, bang, and another quarter turn. The process, sometimes known as “double jack” drilling, required close teamwork, skill, care, and endurance. It was unbelievably laborious: teams could drill just three holes, two and a quarter inches in diameter, two and a half feet deep, in an eight-hour shift. The teams were on two staggered levels in the tunnel bore. Four or five teams of men worked at the rock face on the upper level, called the “heading,” while other teams below them stepwise on the roadbed level, the “bottom,” carried out the broken rock. Working on two levels made scaffolding unnecessary and removal of debris more efficient.
Imagine the noise, vibration, fatigue, and monotony but also the hellish confinement in those tunnels, lit only by oil lamp or candlelight! The air was thick with rock dust, acrid fumes lingered from previous explosions, water dripped and flowed from fissures in the cold rock, and sharp, heavy icicles hung down in the winter. Air temperature ranged from cold to frigid. Rock fragments flew through the air and into eyes and mouths. A moment of distracted attention, mistiming, or simple error and there would be a smashed hand, arm, or fingers. Work in that great dark maw of the mountain never stopped, as three shifts of eight hours each covered a twenty-four-hour day throughout the entire year.
Work continued nonstop through the summer and into the fall and winter of 1866–67, which was one of the worst on record. Forty-four snowstorms from November 1866 to May 1867 left immense quantities of snow. In an understatement, E. B. Crocker reminded an impatient Collis Huntington in New York that the summit “is a rough place in a storm.” The heaviest blizzard of the season lasted from the eighteenth of February to late on the twenty-second and left six feet of snow. Another storm lasted two weeks. Removal of the snow from the track and roadbed required hundreds of hands.
When the drifts were too massive, the workers had to carve out caverns beneath the snow to live and work in the Summit Tunnel and others. A maze of caverns cut through the snowdrifts, connecting living spaces, different tunnel entrances, and work areas. It was an unheard-of existence but one required by the company in order to keep the work going through the terrible winter. Tunneling, which was the most time-consuming task, had to continue without interruption to stay on the construction schedule.
Going to the face of the tunnel’s bore, Railroad Chinese used their drills and hammers to open up holes in the granite, filled them with explosives, a fuse, and clay, hay, or sand, and packed them tight. The fuse would be lit, workers fled the cavern, and a blast would follow like that from the mouth of a huge cannon. Explosions cracked the hard rock and produced thick, burning smoke that had to dissipate before removal of the heavy debris and drilling could resume. The thundering blasts shook the very bowels of the Sierra. Not all the completed drill holes in the tunnel were used, however; many can still be found intact today in tunnels and surrounding rock. Existence, let alone grueling work, in that foul-aired, dark, freezing cavern defies comprehension.
Alfred Hart captured many images of the Railroad Chinese while they worked in the summit area. His work shows us the ruggedness of the land but also lets us see on occasion individuals, unlike in earlier photos where the workers appear as a largely indistinct mass. In “Laborers and Rocks. Near Opening of Summit Tunnel” (below), for example, a half-dozen Chinese seen at close range are breaking down boulders with drills and sledgehammers. They dress similarly but not identically. Some wear leather boots and dungarees; others wear light cotton tunics. Their sunhats vary in style.
In a dramatically contrasting scene, in “Snow Plow. At Cisco” (below), Hart depicts a Chinese man, in a Western-style hat, standing before a huge snowplow to help establish the size of the machine and the towering drifts of snow that still blanketed the land’s surface as late as May. “Constructing Snow Cover. Scene Near the Summit” (below) shows construction of part of the miles of snow sheds that were erected to protect the line. Though Chinese probably accounted for a small proportion of the skilled carpenters, one Chinese fellow, perhaps a helper, stands off to the side, staring at the camera. He moved slightly, though, creating a ghostly effect.
Two of Hart’s most aesthetically appealing images from the summit area show a more temperate side to the climate, and also feature standing Chinese as central elements in the frames. Now known popularly as “Tea Carrier,” which Hart named “Heading of East Portal. Tunnel No. 8, from Donner Lake Railroad, Western Summit” (below), the photograph captures a Chinese man carrying tea to his compatriots in a jug suspended from a shoulder pole. The jug is recycled ceramic and may have held foodstuffs from China. He stands alone, face obscured in shadow, wearing tall leather boots, a tunic, and a sunhat. A conifer bravely reaches out of the cliff above him. The scene is at the same time daunting, with the hulking, immovable mountain resistant to its violation by humans but also with broken rock all around that serves as evidence of a fierce battle.
In “Coldstream, Eastern Slope of Western Summit” (below), three Railroad Chinese stand at the edge of a crystalline pond high in the Sierra. It is summer or fall, with no snow visible on the ground. One of the men is in dark, loose garb with a bowler hat and possibly his queue hanging down his front. Might he be a contractor or even a gambler? He does not look like a laborer from the line. A second man is observing the scene and wears what appears to be a butcher’s or cook’s apron and leather boots. The third and most visible Chinese is a water carrier, with what appear to be a small barrel and a can suspended from a shoulder pole. He stands on a wooden dock, about to dip his containers into the clear water. Behind the group is the back of a wooden structure. A broken wooden wheel and other cart parts lie abandoned on the ground, suggesting that the site was a long-term worker encampment. This photo illustrates the many different roles Chinese played on the line and the specialization of their labor.
Many of Hart’s photos capture the spectacular beauty of the mountains and the colossal scale of the completed work and its surrounding environment. One example is “Donner Lake, Tunnels No. 7 and 8 from Summit Tunnel, Eastern Summit in Distance” (below, top), taken above Tunnel No. 6, which shows us completed work in carving out the roadbed. The track is not yet laid, which dates this to before June 1868. Two other tunnels
are visible. A party of well-dressed men and women stand atop a constructed embankment and take in the commanding view but are careful to stay safely back, away from the precipice. What would a Railroad Chinese worker forging the iron road in that unfamiliar landscape have felt or thought as he stood and took in the majestic vistas so far removed in distance, climate, and environment from his home in the alluvial plains in semitropical southern China? Would he have been able to enjoy the magnificence of the high country, or was it a place he would simply have wanted to quit as quickly as possible?
Close to where he took that shot, Hart also photographed the area on top of Tunnel No. 6 in “Shaft House over Summit Tunnel. American Peak in Distance” (below, bottom). He shows the barrenness of a landscape unable to support much plant life. In the middle of the frame he includes the buildings around a vertical shaft that extended down to the midpoint of Tunnel No. 6 and housing for the workers.
In one of his most stunning images, Hart captured the interior of the uncompleted Summit Tunnel (below). Using an unknown light source, Hart tries to expose the guts of the dark, cavernous bore. The effect is eerie and harrowing in the confinement of the mountain’s bowel. At the far end of the tunnel, one can dimly see the two work levels, the “heading” at the top and the “bottom” on the roadbed level.
Photography, especially outdoors, was strictly limited by the technology of the time. Photographs are often static, sometimes lifeless scenes. Other visual artists, however, could create depictions of the railroad project with greater variety, energy, and imagination. They could suggest movement and human activity. The work of the illustrator Joseph Becker (1841–1910), for one, gives us views of the Chinese that would have eluded a photographer. Becker, who worked for the popular Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper for forty-one years, was one of the most successful illustrators of the nineteenth century. After working on Civil War scenes for the periodical, he was sent to the Far West to create images that would accompany a special feature on Chinese, later published in a series of installments with the title “The Coming Man.” Editor Leslie wanted to “scoop” his competition with extensive reportage and depictions of this population, a subject of great curiosity because of their work on the Pacific Railway. It would be the first major feature on Chinese in America by a national publication.
Becker spent six weeks observing Chinese and drawing them, and Frank Leslie’s reproduced many of his works. One fascinating piece, “A Chinese Camp-Scene on the Line of the Central Pacific Railroad—‘The Coming Man’ Preparing His Evening Meal” shows a busy encampment, which includes men walking about, setting up a tent, and eating with chopsticks from rice bowls and a large common platter of food. Another, holding a long spatula, is cooking. A covered wok may have contained steaming or stewing food. Another one holds numerous whole fish frying, releasing a tantalizing aroma. Laundry flutters in the background. Another illustration shows the interior of a sleeping quarter. Captioned “Chinese Tent Scene, on the California Pacific Railroad,” it depicts Railroad Chinese settling in for the evening’s rest. One is smoking, and a lone candle illuminates the tent. Clothes hang down heavily. (These images appear in chapter 5.)
One of Becker’s best-known images is “Across the Continent: The Snow Sheds on the Central Pacific Railroad” (above), which shows Chinese with tunnels and snow sheds, the accomplishments of their labor. They are hailing the arrival of the train. Snow remains on the ground.
A small cache of informal Becker sketches that never made it into print allows us to “see” Railroad Chinese in different ways. One depicts many Chinese workers alongside the track with a steam engine rapidly approaching. Chinese scramble to get out of the way. The active mass of workers contrasts with the beautiful scenery of trees and snow-covered mountains in the background. Another sketch, seemingly from the same area, shows a Chinese encampment, but instead of tents, this gathering includes modest structures, some with chimneys, indicating the camp was not temporary. Men are moving about, gambling and cooking (above, left). Another image is titled “Chinese Porters for Railroad” (above, right). Though it is cartoonish, as was much of the work of other non-Chinese artists at this time, who had great difficulty rendering Chinese features, it is one of the few complete depictions of Chinese, relaxed and chatting with one another in the middle of snow season in the high country. It presents a moment of human interaction captured many years ago. One can only imagine what sketches Railroad Chinese made in their spare time. There surely must have been an artist or two among the thousands. How might they have rendered themselves and the landscape?
Conditions in the High Sierra were as deadly as they were beautiful, but the railroad workers straining to break through the summit had little opportunity for rest or contemplation. In its relentless drive to compete with the Union Pacific, the CPRR was pushing them harder and harder. And as the work grew more difficult, the solutions for overcoming the challenges of the Sierra became more extreme.
For a short while, the company had workers use the newly invented, and controversial, explosive liquid nitroglycerine. It had several distinct advantages: it produced much less smoke than black powder, was eight times stronger, required smaller drill holes (one and a quarter inches in diameter), and cracked rock in ways that made removal of debris easier and faster. It was more cost effective for the company, but there were also clear problems with its use. Many feared its instability and unpredictability, especially after a horrendous accidental explosion leveled a Wells Fargo building and rattled the ground beneath downtown San Francisco. The CPRR itself experimented with it in April 1866, but an explosion obliterated six workers who were handling it. The company then tried to manufacture the explosive on site in a small factory near Donner Lake. Chinese workers had to hand-carry vials to the tunnels, where it was used for a few months in mid-1867 in Tunnels No. 6, 7, and 8. But its use was also a touchy business: nitroglycerine froze at just 45 degrees Fahrenheit, which required workers to heat it oh so carefully so it could be poured into the drill holes. It also needed a blasting cap to set it off. Accidental explosions were always feared. The company soon ended its use, not because of its danger but because of patent restrictions placed on it by its inventor, Alfred Nobel, and government restrictions on its use and transportation.
Wanting to make progress with the tunneling as fast as possible, company engineers came up with an extreme solution: they ordered the workers to sink a vertical shaft, eight feet by twelve feet, from the surface at the top of the mountain down toward the calculated halfway point of the tunnel. On August 27, 1866, Railroad Chinese began the work. They were able to dig down just one foot a day for the first thirty feet, before removing debris slowed the effort to just seven inches a day. After eighty-five days of work, they finally completed a shaft more than seventy-two foot deep. Men and debris traveled up and down on a lift run by an old steam engine. At the bottom, workers widened an area from which they could attack two “inner” faces of the tunnel. As this inner tunneling lengthened, workers laid temporary tracks for carts carrying broken rock loaded at the faces. They pushed the carts to the shaft’s base, where the carts were hoisted out with their heavy loads. With simultaneous work at four faces, workers were then able to carve out approximately four feet of rock per day. The company constructed a wooden building to cover the top of the shaft so that work could continue year-round (see p. 129).
Progress was expedited. The Summit Tunnel was nearing completion. And then, suddenly, the work stopped.
7
The Strike
The strike began. . . . The men who were working at that hour walked out of the tunnels and away from the tracks. The ones who were sleeping slept on and rose as late as they pleased. They bathed in streams and shaved their moustaches and wild beards. Some went fishing and hunting. The violinists tuned and played their instruments. The drummers beat theirs at the punchlines of jokes. The gamblers shuffled and played their cards and tiles. The smokers passed their pipes, and the drinkers bet for dri
nks by making figures with their hands. The cooks made party food.
—MAXINE HONG KINGSTON, China Men, 1977
In January 1867, in the midst of a terrible winter, CPRR legal counsel E. B. Crocker sent Collis Huntington, who was ensconced in New York City raising capital for the railroad project, a troubling report on the company’s condition. Crocker aimed to disabuse Huntington, who watched the budget closely, of the idea that the company could significantly shrink its costly workforce during the winter months. “It can’t be done,” Crocker reported, if there was a chance of reaching the critical juncture of Truckee at the summit as planned. “If we reduce our force below what it is now, we shall have to discharge our best foremen, and they will get scattered & when we want them again they can’t be had, & the same of the chinamen, they will get at work mining & it will be doubtful whether we can get them when we want them.” Crocker’s account makes clear that the Railroad Chinese were neither tractable nor bound, as critics objected, but independent and free to take advantage of options more attractive to them than work on the railroad.
Crocker further emphasized that since the company required organization, being “thorough & complete is of the first importance.” The current workforce had taken months to assemble, train, and settle. “It is a big job of itself to get several thousand men properly camped, proper foremen selected, & each man appointed to his peculiar duties so that all goes off right.” Crocker wanted Huntington to understand that the company could not “discharge a man. It will ruin all our future hopes.” Indeed, “it will be fatal,” he bluntly told Huntington. Returning specifically to the Chinese, Crocker wrote: “We had hard work last summer & fall to get chinamen to work in this hard rock & they kept leaving rather than do it. What men we have now are trained to hard rock work, & we can depend on them. But we cannot rely on new men to stick to it. We have a big job before us in those long deep rock cuts at the Summit, & we are preparing to rush it as soon as we can get at it.” The company got 50 percent more work from the experienced crews than with “new men,” Crocker argued. Many Railroad Chinese were now veteran and tested workers, not just strong backs.
Ghosts of Gold Mountain Page 15