19 The original of the Arthur Ferguson Journal is in the Utah State Historical Society, Salt Lake City; I worked from a typewritten copy.
20 Grenville M. Dodge, How We Built the Union Pacific Railway, pp. 20-21. Professor Wallace Farnham, in his article “Grenville Dodge” in the Journal of American History, pp. 638-40, calls this story “fanciful” and implies that Dodge not only saw no Indians but was never at the pass. For my part, the story rings true; besides, there were plenty of other eyewitnesses.
21 Klein, Birth of a Railroad, p. 67.
22 Omaha Weekly Herald, Oct. 27, 1865.
23 Oscar O. Winther, The Transportation Frontier: Trans-Mississippi West 1865-1890 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964), p. 8.
24 Klein, Birth of a Railroad, p. 66.
25 Ibid, p. 67.
26 Ibid., pp. 69-70.
27 Ibid., p. 71.
28 James Maxwell Memoir, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Del.; H. K. Nichols Diary, March 11, 1867.
29 Arthur Ferguson Journal, Utah State Historical Society.
30 Reed to Durant, Nov. 1, 1865, Samuel Reed Papers, with thanks to Don Snoddy.
31 Denver Rocky Mountain News, May 25, 1866.
32 Quoted in Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 110.
CHAPTER SEVEN: THE CENTRAL PACIFIC ATTACKS THE SIERRA NEVADA
1 John Logan Allen, North American Exploration: A Continent Comprehended, 3 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), vol. 3, pp. 488-92. King began his survey in 1867, just as the Central Pacific was making its way through the mountains.
2 Clarence King, Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1970 reprint), pp. 6-8. King went on to describe the desert that lay east of the mountains, a passage that will be excerpted when I describe how the Central Pacific graders and track layers came to it.
3 Charles Crocker interview, Bancroft Library.
4 Sacramento Union, Jan. 7, 1865.
5 John R. Signor, Donner Pass: Southern Pacific’s Sierra Crossing (San Marino, Calif.: Golden West Books, 1985), p. 19.
6 Quoted in John J. Stewart, The Iron Trail to the Golden Spike (New York: Meadow Lark Press, 1994), p. 121.
7 Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley.
8 Hopkins to Huntington, Collis Huntington Papers, ser. 1, Incoming Correspondence, reel 1.
9 Thomas W. Chinn, ed., A History of the Chinese in California: A Syllabus (San Francisco: Chinese Historical Society of America, 1969), intro.
10 Quoted in John Hoyt Williams, A Great and Shining Road, p. 96.
11 Elliott West, “Unheard Voices: Digging Deeper into Western History,” paper read before the Western History Conference, Denver, Colo., 1997.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.
14 Judge Samuel Yee oral history, April 19, 1975, by Antoria Chu and Heng Kok Lee; Rudy Kim interview by Jeffery Paul Chan, both in Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley.
15 “The Chinese in California,” Lippincott’s Magazine, March 1868, pp. 36-40.
16 Quoted in Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 97.
17 Ibid., pp. 97-98.
18 Lee Chew, “A Chinese Immigrant Makes His Home in America,” Independent magazine, reprinted on www.historymatters.gmu.edu/text/1650a-chew.html.
19 George Kraus, “Chinese Laborers and the Construction of the Central Pacific,” Utah Historical Quarterly, vol. 37, no. 1 (Winter 1969), p. 51.
20 Hopkins to Huntington, May 31, 1865, Huntington Papers, ser. 1, reel 1.
21 Quoted in George Kraus, High Road to Promontory, p. 110.
22 Wesley S. Griswold, A Work of Giants, p. 117.
23 Quoted in Sacramento Union, June 16, 1865.
24 Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 100.
25 Quoted in Bruce Clement Cooper, Lewis Metzler Clement, p. 7.
26 Robert West Howard, The Great Iron Trail, pp. 229-30; Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 123; Stewart, Iron Trail, p. 129.
27 Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 113.
28 Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 211.
29 Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 115.
30 Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 145.
31 Sacramento Union, Aug. 3, 1865; Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 121; Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 102.
32 Quoted in Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 123.
33 Ibid., p. 124.
34 Williams, Great and Shining Road, pp. 116-17.
35 Stewart, Iron Trail, p. 130.
36 Railroad Record, Nov. 23, 1865.
37 Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 98.
38 Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 120.
39 A. W. Loomis, “How Our Chinamen Are Employed,” Overland Monthly, March 1869, quoted in Griswold, p. 121.
40 Quoted in Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 98.
41 Quoted in Kraus, High Road to Promontory, pp. 116, 120.
42 Lewis Clement, “Statement Concerning Charles Crocker,” Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley.
43 J. O. Wilder, “The Way Pioneer Builders Met Difficulties,” Southern Pacific Bulletin, vol. 9, no. 11 (Nov. 1920), p. 23.
44 Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 144.
45 Southern Pacific Bulletin, vol. 5, no. 21 (Nov. 1917).
46 Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 151.
47 Ibid., p. 125.
CHAPTER EIGHT: THE UNION PACIFIC ACROSS NEBRASKA
1 Robert Athearn, Union Pacific Country, p. 39.
2 Samuel Bowles, Across the Continent: A Summer’s Journey to the Rocky Mountains (Springfield, Mass: S. Bowles, 1866), p. 19.
3 Quoted in Athearn, Union Pacific Country, pp. 42-43.
4 Quoted in Union Pacific Railroad, The Union Pacific Railroad Across the Continent West from Omaha, Nebraska (pamphlet published by the company, 1868), p. 15.
5 Omaha Weekly Herald, Jan. 12 and 19, 1865.
6 Ibid., March 23, 1865.
7 Magee Diary, quoted in the study done for C. B. DeMille for his movie Union Pacific and given to me by Don Snoddy.
8 Quoted in Maury Klein, Birth of a Railroad, p. 72.
9 Ibid.; Grenville M. Dodge, How We Built the Union Pacific Railway, p. 13.
10 Quoted in Klein, Birth of a Railroad, p. 73.
11 Grenville Dodge, A Paper on the Trans-Continental Railways (Omaha, Neb: Union Pacific Railroad, 1891), p. 21.
12 Quoted in John Hoyt Williams, A Great and Shining Road, p. 105.
13 Ibid., pp. 73-74.
14 Quoted in Robert Athearn, “General Sherman and the Western Railroads,” p. 41.
15 Quoted in UP, Union Pacific Railroad, pp. 15-17.
16 All these and many other Reed-to-Durant telegrams are in the UP Archives; I used typed copies prepared by Don Snoddy.
17 Klein, Birth of a Railroad, p. 74.
18 New York Times, Aug. 22, 1866.
19 DeMille collection, p. 16.
20 Quoted in Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 125.
21 Ibid.
22 Quotations on the workers’ daily routine in Williams, p. 125.
23 UP, Union Pacific Railroad; Cincinnati Gazette, June 1867, various articles; DeMille collection, passim.
24 John J. Stewart, The Iron Trail to the Golden Spike, pp. 152-53.
25 Henry M. Stanley, My Early Travels and Adventures in America and Asia (New York: Scribner, 1895), vol. 1, pp. 195-96.
26 Cincinnati Gazette, June 14, 1887.
27 Quoted in Oscar O. Winther, The Transportation Frontier, p. 111.
28 Omaha Weekly Herald, May 11, 1866.
29 Ibid., Aug. 2, 1866.
30 Reed telegrams in UP Archives, Omaha, courtesy of Don Snoddy.
31 Omaha Weekly Herald, Sept. 7, 1866.
32 Ibid., Sept. 21, 1866.
33 Denver Rocky Mountain News, June 18, 1866.
34 Athearn, “Sherman and the Western Railroads,” p. 43.
35 Omaha Weekly Herald, Feb. 22, 1866.
36 The material in the preceding paragraphs is taken from Union Pacific Railroa
d, Excursion to the Hundredth Meridian: From New York to Platte City (1867 pamphlet). There is a copy in the UP Archives, Omaha.
37 Klein, Birth of a Railroad, p. 76.
38 Athearn, Union Pacific Country, p. 51.
39 Ibid., p. 62.
40 Ibid., pp. 78-79; Grenville Dodge, Report of the Chief Engineer for 1866 (Washington, D.C: Philip & Solomons, 1868), p. 11.
41 Dodge, Report of 1866, pp. 27-30.
42 Ibid., pp. 13-16.
43 Ibid., pp. 70-72.
44 The Reed telegrams to Durant are in the UP Archives.
45 Klein, Birth of a Railroad, pp. 82-83.
46 Ibid., pp. 18-20.
CHAPTER NINE: THE CENTRAL PACIFIC ASSAULTS THE SIERRA
1 Thomas C. Cochran, Railroad Leaders 1845-1890, p. 1.
2 Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California, vol. 7, pp. 551-52.
3 George Kraus, High Road to Promontory, p. 125.
4 Sacramento Union, Jan. 13, 1866.
5 Omaha Weekly Herald, Nov. 2, 1866.
6 The Hopkins-Huntington letters are in Collis Huntington Papers, Library of Congress. The Cohen quote is from Kraus, High Road to Promontory, p. 88.
7 Sacramento Union, Nov. 25, 1865.
8 Quoted in Kraus, High Road to Promontory, p. 123.
9 John Hoyt Williams, A Great and Shining Road, p. 130.
10 Charles Crocker interview, Bancroft Library.
11 Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 130.
12 Charles Crocker Memoir, Bancroft Library.
13 Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 131.
14 Quoted in Wesley S. Griswold, A Work of Giants, p. 156.
15 Dutch Flat Enquirer, April 27 and June 2, 1866.
16 Quoted in Southern Pacific Bulletin, June 1927; Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 133.
17 Quoted in Kraus, High Road to Promontory, p. 136.
18 Clement to Stanford, July 21, 1887, U.S. Pacific Railway Commission, exhibit no. 8, p. 2576.
19 Quoted in Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 134.
20 Quoted in Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 149.
21 Ibid.
22 Quoted in Sacramento Union, Oct. 23, 1866.
23 Dutch Flat Enquirer, Oct. 30, 1866.
24 Sacramento Union, Nov. 27, 1866.
25 Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 142.
26 Alexander Saxton, “The Army of Canton in the High Sierra,” Pacific Historical Review, vol. 35 (June 1966), p. 147.
27 Ibid., p. 143; Thomas W. Chinn, ed., A History of the Chinese in California, p. 45.
28 John J. Stewart, The Iron Trail to the Golden Spike, p. 133; Chinn, ed., Chinese in California, p. 45.
29 Dutch Flat Enquirer, Dec. 25, 1866.
30 Kraus, High Road to Promontory, p. 136; Southern Pacific Bulletin, July 1924.
31 Sacramento Union, Dec. 27, 1866.
32 Ibid.
33 E. B. Crocker to Huntington, Dec. 22, 1866, Huntington Papers.
34 George Kraus, “Chinese Laborers and the Construction of the Central Pacific,” Utah Historical Quarterly, vol. 37, no. 1 (Winter 1969), p. 49.
35 Kraus, High Road to Promontory, pp. 142-43.
CHAPTER TEN: THE UNION PACIFIC TO THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS
1 Wesley S. Griswold, A Work of Giants, p. 210.
2 The Reed telegrams are in Samuel Reed Papers, transcribed by Don Snoddy.
3 John Hoyt Williams, A Great and Shining Road, pp. 146-47.
4 The Reed diaries and letters are in Reed Papers; thanks to Don Snoddy for transcribing them for me.
5 E. C. Lockwood, “With the Casement Brothers While Building the Union Pacific,” Union Pacific Magazine, Feb. 1931, p. 3.
6 Omaha Weekly Herald, April 12, 1867.
7 Robert G. Athearn, “General Sherman and the Western Railroads,” p. 422.
8 Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 208.
9 Grenville M. Dodge, How We Built the Union Pacific Railway, p. 14.
10 Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 147.
11 Reed to Mrs. Reed, April 27, 1867, Reed Papers.
12 Grenville Dodge, Romantic Realities: The Story of the Building of the Pacific Roads. (Omaha, Neb: Union Pacific Railroad, 1891), p. 17.
13 Reed to Mrs. Reed, May 6, 1867, Reed Papers.
14 Chicago Tribune, Aug. 20, 1867.
15 Ibid., June 18, 1867.
16 Ferguson diary, UP Archives, Omaha.
17 Maury Klein, Birth of a Railroad, p. 136.
18 Ferguson Journal, Utah State Historical Society.
19 Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 150.
20 Dodge, How We Built, pp. 15-16.
21 Ferguson Journal, Utah State Historical Society.
22 Dodge, How We Built, p. 20; Klein, Birth of a Railroad, p. 103.
23 Dodge, How We Built, p. 117.
24 Ibid., p. 105; Andrew Rosewater, “Finding a Path Across the Rocky Mountain Range,” Union Pacific Magazine, Jan. 1923, pp. 6-7.
25 Robert Miller Galbraith, “Life on the Railroad,” interview, in Carbon County Museum, Rawlins, Wyo.
26 My thanks to Richard Snow, editor of American Heritage, fox sending me a copy of Benét’s story.
27 Henry Morton Stanley, My Early Travels and Adventures in America and Asia, vol. 1, pp. 154-57.
28 Reed to Mrs. Reed, Aug. 15, 1867, Reed Papers.
29 Stanley, My Early Travels, vol. 1, pp. 163-67.
30 Samuel Bowles, Our New West: Records of Travel: A Full Description of the Pacific Railroad (Hartford, Conn.: Hartford Publishing, 1869), pp. 56-57.
31 Chicago Tribune, June 18, 1867.
32 Dodge, How We Built, pp. 118-19.
33 Klein, Birth of a Railroad, p. 104.
34 Ibid., pp. 106-7.
35 New York Tribune, Jan. 18, 1867.
36 Harpers Weekly, Nov. 16, 1867.
37 Ibid., Aug. 24, 1867.
38 Ferguson diary, UP Archives.
39 New York Tribune, Aug. 8, 1867.
40 Chicago Tribune, Aug. 20, 1867.
41 Quoted in Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 216.
42 Klein, Birth of a Railroad, p. 116. After serving as the chief assistant to President Ulysses S. Grant, beginning in 1869, Rawlins died in 1870.
43 Thomas Hubbard Diary, UP Archives, Omaha.
44 Ibid.
45 Dodge, How We Built, p. 22.
46 Athearn, “General Sherman and the Western Railroads,” p. 43.
47 Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 229.
48 Charles Edgar Ames, Pioneering the Union Pacific: A Reappraisal of the Builders of the Railroad (New York: Apple ton-Century-Crofts, 1969), pp. 173-77.
49 Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 159.
50 Ames, Pioneering the Union Pacific, pp. 196-202.
51 New York Times, Dec. 4, 1867.
52 Chicago Tribune, Nov. 16, 1867.
53 Dodge, How We Built, p. 116.
54 Quoted in John Debo Galloway, The First Transcontinental Railroad, p. 285.
55 G. M. Dodge, Report of the Chief Engineer for the Year 1867 (Washington, D.C: Government Printing Office, 1868), pp. 26-27.
56 Chicago Tribune, Nov. 16, 1867.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE CENTRAL PACIFIC PENETRATES THE SUMMIT
1 Henry Poor, “Railroad to the Pacific,” in The Golden Spike: A Centennial Remembrance (New York: American Geographical Society, 1969), p. 19.
2 Quoted in Bruce Clement Cooper, Lewis Metzler Clement, p. 7.
3 The details are taken from John R. Gilliss’s speech before the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1870, reprinted in George Kraus, High Road to Promontory, pp. 144-152.
4 Ibid., p. 146.
5 Ibid.
6 Wesley S. Griswold, A Work of Giants, pp. 190-91.
7 Sacramento Union, March 9, 1867.
8 Clement to Stanford, July 21, 1887, in U.S. Pacific Railway Commission Report No. 2576, pamphlet provided by Cooper-Clement Associates, Ardmore, Pa. 19003.
9 Gilliss’s speech, in Kraus, High Road to Promo
ntory, p. 145.
10 Ibid., pp. 147-48.
11 Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 193.
12 Ibid.
13 Kraus, High Road to Promontory, p. 159.
14 J.D. Brennan, “The Romance of the Sacramento Division,” Southern Pacific Bulletin, Aug. 1920, p. 4.
15 Charles Crocker to Huntington, Jan. 7, 1867, Collis Huntington Papers. Unless otherwise noted, all correspondence between Huntington and the other members of the board of directors comes out of the Huntington Papers.
16 Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 194.
17 Hopkins to Huntington, May 2, 1867.
18 E. B. Crocker to Huntington, May 8, 1867.
19 Charles Crocker to Huntington, Jan. 14, 1867.
20 E. B. Crocker to Hopkins, April 15, 1867; Stanford to Hopkins, April 16, 1867.
21 Kraus, High Road to Promontory, p. 182.
22 Ibid., p. 183.
23 E. B. Crocker to Huntington, Jan. 14, 1867.
24 Same to same, April 23, 1867.
25 Stanford to Huntington, Jan. 7, 1867.
26 On March 8, 1867, and March 9, 1867, in letters to Huntington, E. B. Crocker discusses this matter.
27 E. B. Crocker to Huntington, April 16, 1867.
28 Maury Klein, Birth of a Railroad, p. 148.
29 E. B. Crocker to Huntington, April 23, 1867.
30 Charles Crocker comments on the Bancroft biography, Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley.
31 Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 195.
32 Ibid., p. 196.
33 E. B. Crocker to Huntington, May 22 and 27, 1867.
34 Same to same, May 27, 1867.
35 Sacramento Union, July 12, 1867.
36 Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 197.
37 E. B. Crocker to Huntington, June 26, 1867.
38 Same to same, June 28, 1867.
39 Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 197.
40 E. B. Crocker to Huntington, July 2 and 6, 1867.
41 Huntington to E. B. Crocker, Dec. 28, 1867.
42 E. B. Crocker to Huntington, Sept. 12, 1867.
43 Same to same, July 10, 1867.
44 Same to same, Dec. 20, 1867.
45 Same to same, July 10 and Sept. 12, 1867.
46 Huntington to Charles Crocker, quoted in William Deverell, Railroad Crossing: Californians and the Railroad, 1850-1910 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), p. 14.
47 E. B. Crocker to Huntington, Aug. 28, 1867.
48 Sacramento Union, Aug. 30, 1867.
49 Huntington to E. B. Crocker, Oct. 3, 1867.
50 Sacramento Union, Dec. 9, 1867; Crocker to Huntington, Oct. 30, 1867.
51 Huntington to Stanford, Oct. 26, 1867.
Nothing Like It in the World The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869 Page 47