As insistent as those: The most prominent critique of the baskets claim is Edson T. Strobridge, “The Central Pacific Railroad and the Legend of Cape Horn: Laborers in Baskets, Fact or Fiction?” 2001, Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum, http://cprr.org/Museum/Cape_Horn.html (accessed August 18, 2018).
Another highly charged: Sierra Nevada Geotourism, “Cape Horn and the Transcontinental Railroad,” http://www.sierranevadageotourism.org/content/cape-horn-and-the-transcontinental-railroad/sie3CF4CAC0C3AA88FF9 (accessed March 31, 2017); and Roger Staab to Roland Hsu, email, February 10, 2017, in author’s possession.
An 1869 tour book: Wallace H. Atwell, Great Trans-continental Railroad Guide (Chicago: G. A. Crofutt & Co., 1869), 201–2. The section of the book is titled “Cape Horn.” Sources with similar descriptions of Chinese lowered by ropes at Cape Horn include Henry Morford, Morford’s Scenery and Sensation Handbook of the Pacific Railroads and California (New York: Chas. T. Dillingham, 1878), 164; William Minturn, Travels West (London: Samuel Tinsley, 1877), 227; The Pacific Tourist: Adams & Bishop’s Illustrated Trans-Continental Guide (New York: Adams & Bishop, 1877 and 1884), 252; D. L. Phillips, Letters from California (Springfield: Illinois State Journal, 1877), 55; Robert L. Harris, “The Pacific Railroad Unopen,” Overland Monthly 3 (1869), 248; and Caroline Amelia Clapp Chickering, letter to mother, November 9, 1876, published in The Californian 12, no. 1 cited in “Cape Horn—Ropes or Baskets,” http://cprr.org/Museum/Chinese.html#baskets (accessed August 29, 2018).
Frederick A. Bee: Testimony, in Report of the Joint Special Committee to Investigate Chinese Immigration, 44th Cong., 2nd sess. (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1877), 4.
One of the first mentions: The Central Pacific Railroad (New York: T. Nelson and Sons, 1870), 21.
The most stirring description: Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains (London: John Murray, 1894), 5.
But the most compelling: The Pittsfield Eagle report ran under the title “Wholesale Blasting” in the Providence (R.I.) Evening Press, December 14, 1868, as well as in the New London (Conn.) Democrat, January 2, 1869; New England Farmer (Boston), January 9, 1869; Weekly Union (Manchester, N.H.), January 19, 1869; Portsmouth (N.H.) Journal of Literature and Politics, February 6, 1869; Bangor (Maine) Daily Whig and Courier, February 11, 1869; and Fayetteville (Tenn.) Observer, May 27, 1869. Thanks go to Shelley Fisher Fishkin for locating these sources.
Lastly, the topography: Samuel S. Montague, Report of the Chief Engineer upon Recent Surveys, Progress of Construction, and an Approximate Estimate of Receipts of the Central Pacific Railroad of California (N.p., October 8, 1864), 13. In a later report Montague writes that the construction around Cape Horn was less difficult than first anticipated and that two retaining walls were constructed. See his report dated December 25, 1865, http://cprr.org/Museum/Cape_Horn.html (accessed October 19, 2018). Louis M. Clement briefly mentions Cape Horn in his 1865 journal, HM 66487, Huntington Library.
Several months later: Diary of Stephen Allen Curry, November 23, 1864–June 16, 1865, Curry Family Collection, California Historical Society, San Francisco. Thanks go to Roland Hsu for locating this collection.
There is also firm evidence: Bruce A. MacGregor, Birth of the California Narrow Gauge: A Regional Study of the Technology of Thomas and Martin Carter (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 533–49; and Narrow Gauge Portrait: South Pacific Coast (Felton, Calif.: Glenwood Publishers, 1975), 98. Thanks to Derek Whaley for providing these references.
The mystery around: The use of baskets may have occurred at a location other than Cape Horn. Farther east from Cape Horn is Crested Peak, a place where, according to a New York Evening Post report, published in a British paper, a “rugged precipice towers above you a thousand feet, with its shattered sides looking dreadfully as if they wanted to drop an immense fragment of rock on your head. The engineers were fain to tie themselves with ropes as they surveyed along here,” and even the Chinese first objected to the work, with “but a thousand feet of precipice below them with a thousand more above them, and hanging on by the skin of their teeth.” The use of baskets, however, is not specifically mentioned in the news report. Throughout the Sierra, ice on and between the rocks would have made stable footing impossible. “The Central Pacific Railroad,” Leeds Mercury, December 28, 1867. A local California historian writes that baskets were used by workers “to chip away at the ledge east of Colfax and around Cape Horn” but provides no source. A. Thomas Homer, Auburn and Placer County: Crossroads of a Golden Era (Northridge, Calif.: Windsor Publications, 1988), 37. Railroad historian Phil Sexton also identifies Crested Peak as an area where baskets may have been used. Sexton to author, email, October 25, 2017.
Hart, who had come: The Stanford University library makes Hart’s CPRR photos available online and provides a magnifying function for close study of images. This tool enables one to see Chinese who were obscure, indistinct, or undetectable in the original images.
Hart’s work impressed: E. B. Crocker to Huntington, January 9, 1867, Huntington Letters.
Hart’s work nevertheless: Alfred A. Hart photographs, 1862–1869, Special Collections, Green Library, Stanford University. Also see, Li Ju and Linda Ye, “A Photo Comparative Perspective of the Central Pacific Railroad,” CRWP Digital Publishing Series (forthcoming).
Captions for some photos: “Wood Train and Chinamen in Bloomer Cut,” in Lawrence & Houseworth Albums, Society of California Pioneers, http://www.californiapioneers.org/lh/search_image.php?id=1129&type=search&page=1&category=bloomer%20cut (accessed September 1, 2018).
hailed at the time: Article by Ralph Gibson, Placer Historical Society Newsletter, May–June 2011, https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,2632342 (accessed August 19, 2018).
Bloomer Cut, which was completed: According to a commemorative plaque at the site from the Native Sons of the Golden West, dated October 12, 1991, Chinese laborers were at least in part responsible for completing the cut, though some question the extent of their involvement. Ibid.
5. THE HIGH SIERRA
During the construction months: Maxine Hong Kingston writes movingly of this legend in China Men (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980), 129–30. Thanks to Sik Lee Denning for discussions about the moon and the stars in Chinese tradition.
In August 1865: Albert D. Richardson, Beyond the Mississippi: From the Great River to the Great Ocean (Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Co., 1869), 461–62; and “Richardson’s Letters to the Tribune,” Sacramento Daily Union, December 18, 1865.
In terms of quality: George E. Gray, Central Pacific Railroad Report (Sacramento: H. S. Crocker, 1865), with letter from Stanford, 1, 8.
familiar with black powder: David Faure, Emperor and Ancestor: State and Lineage in South China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), 312–14.
Dramatic weather changes: Placer Herald, September 30, October 14 and 21, 1865; and Bain, Empire Express, 245–46 and 259–60.
Snowfall began in September: John R. Gilliss, “Tunnels of the Pacific Railroad,” speech before the American Society of Civil Engineers, January 5, 1870, reproduced in Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers 1 (1872): 155–72.
Archaeology provides: Barbara L. Voss, “Archaeological Contributions to Research on Chinese Railroad Workers in North America,” in Chinese and the Iron Road: Building the Transcontinental and Other Railroads in North America, ed. Gordon H. Chang and Shelley Fisher Fishkin (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019); Barbara L. Voss, “The Historical Experience of Labor: Archaeological Contributions to Interdisciplinary Research on Chinese Railroad Workers,” and Paul G. Chace, “Celestial Sojourners in the High Sierras: The Ethno-Archaeology of Chinese Railroad Workers (1865–1868),” Historical Archaeology 49, no. 1 (2015): 4–23 and 27–33.
Consistency in found objects: Barbara L. Voss, “Living Between Misery and Triumph: The Material Practices of Chinese Railroad Workers in North America”; Voss, “Archaeological Contributions”; and Kelly J. Dix
on with Gary Weisz, Christopher Merritt, Robert Weaver, and James Bard, “Landscapes of Change: Culture, Nature, and the Archaeological Heritage of Transcontinental Railroads in the North American West,” all in Chang and Fishkin, Chinese and the Iron Road; and Kenneth P. Cannon et al., The Archaeology of Chinese Railroad Workers in Utah: Results of Surveys in Box Elder and Emery Counties (Logan, Utah: USU Archaeological Services, 2016).
Large rectangular depressions: Dixon et al., “Landscapes of Change.”
Observers of the construction effort: Robert L. Harris, “The Pacific Railroad—Unopen,” Overland Monthly, September 1, 1869, 244–52.
Author Daniel Cleveland: Daniel Cleveland, “The Chinese in California,” unpublished manuscript, Daniel Cleveland Manuscripts, 1868–1929, mssHM 72175–72177, Huntington Library, San Marino.
At Summit Camp: R. Scott Baxter and Rebecca Allen, “The View from Summit Camp,” Historical Archaeology 49, no. 1 (2015): 34–35.
Snow buried not only: Lewis M. Clement to Leland Stanford, July 21, 1887, and James H. Strobridge to Leland Stanford, July 23, 1887, reproduced in Testimony Taken by the Pacific Railway Commission, vol. 5 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1887), 2576–2578; Bain, Empire Express, 317–20; Donner Summit Heirloom, no. 96, August 2016, 1, 3. Some histories render John R. Gilliss’s surname with only one “s.”
During late spring: Sandy Lydon, Chinese Gold: The Chinese in the Monterey Bay Region (Capitola, Calif.: Capitola Book Co., 1985), 91; Watt Stewart, Chinese Bondage in Peru: A History of the Chinese Coolie in Peru, 1849–1874 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1951), 230.
Potent odors permeated: Mary L. Maniery, Rebecca Allen, and Sarah Christine Heffner, Finding Hidden Voices of the Chinese Railroad Workers: An Archaeological and Historical Journey (Germantown, Md.: Society for Historical Archaeology, 2016), 22–57.
Food and diet: J. Ryan Kennedy, Sarah Heffner, Virginia Popper, Ryan P. Harrod, and John J. Crandall, “The Health and Well-Being of Chinese Railroad Workers,” in Chang and Fishkin, Chinese and the Iron Road.
Speaker of the House: “City Items,” Alta California, August 18, 1865.
Inventory in a Chinese store: Robert F. G. Spier, “Food Habits of Nineteenth-Century California Chinese,” California Historical Society Quarterly 37, nos. 1 and 2 (March and June 1958): 79–84, 129–36; Sucheng Chan, This Bittersweet Soil: The Chinese in California Agriculture, 1860–1910 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 82–86.
Railroad Chinese likely consumed: Dutch Flat Enquirer, February 24, 1866; Spier, “Food Habits.”
In the mountain areas: Donner Summit Heirloom, no. 95 (July 2016): 1, 3–7.
Southern Chinese have: Charlotte K. Sunseri, “Alliance Strategies in the Racialized Railroad Economies of the American West”; J. Ryan Kennedy, “Zooarchaeology, Localization, and Chinese Railroad Workers in North America”; and R. Scott Baxter and Rebecca Allen, “The View from Summit Camp,” all Historical Archaeology 49, no. 1 (2015): 85–99, 34–45, 122–33.
Journalists at the time: Spier, “Food Habits”; Kennedy et al., “Health and Well-Being.”
Other evidence exists: Railroad Gazette, September 10, 1870, cited in Sue Fawn Chung, Chinese in the Woods: Logging and Lumbering in the American West (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015) 157.
California Chinese farmed: Russell M. Magnaghi, “Virginia City’s Chinese Community, 1860–1880,” Nevada Historical Society Quarterly 24, no. 2 (Summer 1981): 130–58. Also see Yong Chen, Chop Suey, USA: The Story of Chinese Food in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), 74–81; and Yong Chen, “Uncovering and Understanding the Experiences of Chinese Railroad Workers in Broader Socioeconomic Contexts,” CRWP Digital Publishing series (forthcoming).
Hundreds of Chinese: Chan, This Bittersweet Soil, 79–108, 147–57; August Ward Loomis, “The Old East in the New West,” Overland Monthly, October, 1868, 360–68; “How Our Chinamen Are Employed,” Overland Monthly, March 1869, 231–40; Gordon Richards, “Life for Chinese in Truckee Not Easy in 1870,” Sierra Sun, November 26, 2006; Voss, “Living Between Misery and Triumph; and William Speer, The Oldest and the Newest Empire: China and the United States (Hartford, Conn.: S. S. Scranton and Co., 1870), 528.
Their meals invariably: “The California Chinese,” Weekly Arkansas Gazette, November 27, 1866.
When he was a youngster: Pappy Clay, “Personal Life of a Chinese Coolie, 1868–1899,” March 1, 1969, Kyle Wyatt Papers, Chinese Railroad Workers Project Archive, Stanford. Thanks to Kyle Wyatt for providing this.
On special occasions: “City Intelligence,” Sacramento Daily Union, January 11, 1870; “Funeral Baked Meats,” Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine, July 1869, 21–29; Donner Summit Heirloom, no. 100 (December 2016): 11–12; “Chinese Cookery,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated, January 20, 1866, 283; and “Epitome of the Week,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated, March 24, 1866, 547.
Other Chinese labor contractors: Chung, Chinese in the Woods, 39–40.
The Sisson, Wallace Company: Albert W. Sisson, William H. Wallace, and Clark W. Crocker were partners in Sisson, Wallace & Company, which became Sisson, Crocker & Company after Wallace’s death. On its operations, see Wallace et al. v. Sisson et al., June 9 1893, in Peter V. Ross, ed., California Unreported Cases, vol. 4 (San Francisco: Bender-Moss Company, 1913), 34–47.
The business records: Hao Zou, “Preliminary findings of research into the records of Ah Louis, Special Collections, Green Library, Stanford University.” Thanks to Hao Zou for his work on the Ah Louis material. For similar arrangements between Chinese workers and merchants/contractors, see Sue Fawn Chung, In Pursuit of Gold (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011), 16–18; and Lydon, Chinese Gold, 91, 94, 210–12, and 312.
The Railroad Chinese were: Voss, “Living Between Misery and Triumph”; and Chung, Chinese in the Woods, 81–86.
Railroad Chinese, however: Overland Monthly, September 1869, 244–49; and Voss, “Living Between Misery and Triumph.”
A vast quantity of items: Maniery, Allen, and Heffner, Finding Hidden Voices, 40–41, 48–57; Marjorie Akin, James C. Bard, and Gary Weisz, “Asian Coins Recovered from Chinese Railroad Labor Camps,” Historical Archaeology 49, no. 1 (2015): 110–21; and Lisa See, On Gold Mountain (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 9–12
Railroad Chinese even ate: Maniery, Allen, and Heffner, Finding Hidden Voices, 35–39; Barbara Voss, “The Archaeology of Precarious Lives: Chinese Railroad Workers in Nineteenth-Century North America,” Current Anthropology 59, no. 3 (June 2018): 287–313.
Material objects also tell: Kathryn Gin Lum, “Religion on the Road: How Chinese Migrants Adapted Popular Religion to an American Context,” in Chang and Fishkin, Chinese and the Iron Road; and Arthur P. Wolf, “Gods, Ghosts, and Ancestors,” in Religion and Ritual in Chinese Society, ed. Arthur P. Wolf (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974), 131–82.
Figurines and images: Stewart Culin, The Religious Ceremonies of the Chinese in the Eastern Cities of the United States (Philadelphia: Franklin Printing House, 1887), 3–5; Otis Gibson, The Chinese in America (Cincinnati: Hitchcock & Walden, 1877), 72–74. Thank you to Selia Tan for insight into Siyi spiritual practices.
Gui jie or zhongyuan jie: “The Feast of the Dead,” Daily Alta California, April 4, 1870.
In mid-August 1868: Wolfram Eberhard, Chinese Festivals (New York: Henry Schuman, 1952), 129–33; and Thomas Arthur Deeble, “A History of Two Chinatowns in Grass Valley and Nevada City” (master’s thesis, San Francisco State College, 1972), 128–35.
Entering town, Hung Wah: M. V. Foster, “Our Chinese Camp Meeting Described by an Eastern Visitor,” letter to the Piqua (Ohio) Helmet, September 11, 1868, reprinted in the Grass Valley Union Newspaper, quoted in Wallace R. Hagaman, Chinese Temples of Nevada City and Grass Valley, California, 1868–1938 (Nevada City, Calif.: Cowboy Press, 2001), 11–16.
Old-time Chinese Americans: I heard this story from elders when I was young.
6. THE SUMMIT
On a sultry
Fourth of July: Sacramento Daily Union, July 4 and 6, 1866.
Huzzahs to the republic: “The Chinese in California,” Sacramento Daily Union, July 9, 1866.
By the time: Leland Stanford, E. H. Miller Jr., and Samuel S. Montague, “To the Board of Directors of the Central Pacific Railroad Company,” January 5, 1867, reprinted in Testimony Taken by the Pacific Railway Commission, vol. 5 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1887), 3050, 3051; and “The Building of the Iron Road,” Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine, May 1869, 469–78.
The dramatic contrast: Gilliss, “Tunnels of the Pacific Railroad,” 155–72.
In a formal report: Stanford, Miller, and Montague, “To the Board of Directors.”
Ever watchful: Stanford, ibid.; and “The Use of Black Powder and Nitroglycerine on the Transcontinental Railroad,” Linda Hall Library, https://railroad.lindahall.org/essays/black-powder.html (accessed June 16, 2018).
While Stanford wrote: “The Building of the Iron Road,” Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine, May 1869, 469–78.
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