![]() The railroad refused to negotiate but eventually raised the Chinese workers’ pay, though not to parity.Īfter the Sierra, the Chinese workers faced the blistering heat of the Nevada and Utah deserts, yet they drove ahead at an astonishing rate.Īs they approached the meeting point with the Union Pacific, thousands of them laid down a phenomenal 10 miles of track in less than 24 hours, a record that has never been equaled. At the time it was the largest worker action in American history. Three-thousand workers along the railroad route went on strike, demanding wage parity, better working conditions and shorter hours. The Chinese workers were paid 30% to 50% less than their white counterparts and were given the most dangerous work. ![]() It still took two years to accomplish the task. From there, they carved out toward the portals, doubling the rate of progress by tunneling from both sides. After opening portals along the rock face on either side of the mountain, they dug an 80-foot shaft down to the estimated midway point. To speed up the carving of the tunnels, the Chinese laborers worked from several directions. They blasted out 15 tunnels, the longest nearly 1,700 feet. The men who came from humid south China labored through two of the worst winters on record, surviving in caverns dug beneath the snow. The railroad bed snaked through passes at more than 7,000 feet. Solid granite peaks soared to 14,000 feet in elevation. The greatest challenge was to push the line through the Sierra summit. ![]() All work was done by hand using carts, shovels and picks but no machinery. To get to the High Sierra, Chinese workers cut through dense forests, filled deep ravines, constructed long trestles and built enormous retaining walls - some of which remain intact today. Trapped by winter storms in the mountains, they resorted to cannibalism. The Sierra Nevada is a rugged, formidable range, its inhospitableness encapsulated by the gruesome tragedy of the Donner party in 18. Many observers at the time had assumed that Stanford and the railroad were daft for thinking they could link California with the East because an immense mountain range separated the state from Nevada and beyond. These workers showed their mettle, and sealed their legacy, on the peaks of the Sierra Nevada. He told President Andrew Johnson that the Chinese were indispensable to building the railroad: They were “quiet, peaceable, patient, industrious and economical.” In a stockholder report, Stanford described construction as a “herculean task” and said it had been accomplished thanks to the Chinese, who made up 90% of the Central Pacific Railroad’s labor force. The material allowed us to recover a sense of the lived experiences of the thousands of Chinese migrants Leland Stanford came to greatly admire.
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