First Transcontinental Railroad (1863-1869): The Golden Spike

The first transcontinental railroad in the United States was built between 1863 and 1869 by two companies working from opposite ends: the Central Pacific from Sacramento, California, and the Union Pacific from Omaha, Nebraska. On 10 May 1869 their tracks met at Promontory Summit in Utah Territory, where a golden spike marked the completion. The line cut the time to cross the continent from months to about a week and reshaped the economy, settlement and peoples of the American West.

Background: the case for a Pacific railroad

After the California Gold Rush began in 1848 and California became a state in 1850, the United States had a populous Pacific coast separated from the East by deserts and mountains. Travellers went overland by wagon for four to six months, or by sea around South America or across Panama.

Congress commissioned surveys of possible routes in the 1850s, but sectional rivalry between North and South blocked a decision on where the line should run. Southern politicians favoured a southern route, and the Gadsden Purchase of 1853 from Mexico was made partly to secure suitable land for one, while Northern interests pressed for a central or northern line. The engineer Theodore Judah found a practical route over the Sierra Nevada through Donner Pass and in 1861 persuaded four Sacramento merchants, Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington, Mark Hopkins and Charles Crocker, later known as the “Big Four”, to found the Central Pacific Railroad.

The Pacific Railway Acts

With Southern states gone from Congress during the Civil War, a central route became possible. President Abraham Lincoln signed the Pacific Railway Act on 1 July 1862. It authorised the Central Pacific to build east and created the Union Pacific Railroad to build west from the Missouri River.

The companies received government bonds for each mile completed, ranging from $16,000 per mile on flat land to $48,000 per mile in mountains, together with land grants along the route. A second act in 1864 doubled the land grants to twenty square-mile sections per mile of track and allowed the companies to raise private money ahead of the government loans. Overall, the railroads received tens of millions of acres of public land.

Building the Central Pacific

The Central Pacific broke ground in Sacramento on 8 January 1863. Its first and hardest task was climbing the Sierra Nevada. Judah died of yellow fever later in 1863, and the work was directed by Crocker, with James Strobridge as construction superintendent.

Labour was scarce in California, where men preferred mining. In 1865 the company began hiring Chinese workers, and soon they made up the large majority of its workforce; estimates for the peak range from about 10,000 to 12,000. They blasted fifteen tunnels through granite, using black powder and, for a time, nitroglycerin, and worked through severe winters in which avalanches killed many. The Summit Tunnel, about 1,659 feet (506 metres) long, took over a year to complete. Chinese workers were paid less than white workers and usually had to provide their own food. In June 1867 several thousand went on strike for equal pay and shorter hours; the company cut off their food supplies and the strike ended after about a week.

Supply was a constant problem. California had almost no iron industry, so rails, locomotives and machinery had to be shipped from the East Coast around Cape Horn or across the Isthmus of Panama, a journey of months. To keep the line open in winter, the company later built many miles of wooden snow sheds over the tracks in the high Sierra.

Once out of the mountains in 1868, the Central Pacific raced across Nevada. On 28 April 1869 its crews laid just over 10 miles of track in a single day, a feat often described as the record for track laid by hand in one day.

Building the Union Pacific

The Union Pacific held a groundbreaking ceremony in Omaha on 2 December 1863, but serious track laying started only in July 1865, after the Civil War. Its chief engineer from 1866 was Grenville M. Dodge, a former Union general, and its track-laying contractors were the brothers Jack and Dan Casement. Many workers were Irish immigrants and veterans of both Union and Confederate armies.

Its supplies came up the Missouri River by steamboat until a railway from Chicago reached Council Bluffs, across the river from Omaha, in 1867. In the Rocky Mountains the Union Pacific crossed Sherman Summit in Wyoming at about 8,247 feet (2,514 metres), the highest point on the line. In Utah both companies hired Mormon crews under contracts arranged with Brigham Young to grade the roadbed.

The Union Pacific advanced quickly across the flat Great Plains, followed by temporary towns that critics nicknamed “Hell on Wheels”. The line crossed the lands of the Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho and other Native nations, who had not consented. Raids on survey parties and work crews were met by army protection, and the railroad helped open the plains to settlers, hunters and soldiers.

The company’s vice-president, Thomas C. Durant, and his associates used a construction company called Crédit Mobilier of America to overcharge the railroad and enrich insiders. The scheme, which involved shares given to members of Congress, became a major scandal when exposed in 1872.

The golden spike at Promontory Summit

Because the government paid by the mile, the two companies’ graders actually passed each other in Utah, building parallel lines for many miles. Congress finally set Promontory Summit, north of the Great Salt Lake, as the meeting point.

On 10 May 1869 the Central Pacific locomotive Jupiter and Union Pacific No. 119 faced each other across the gap. Stanford and Durant took part in the ceremony, and several ceremonial spikes were presented, including a golden spike supplied by the San Francisco businessman David Hewes. The last spike and hammer were wired to the telegraph, and the single word “DONE” was sent across the country. Cities from San Francisco to New York celebrated with bells, cannon and parades. Even then the journey was not quite seamless: passengers had to cross the Missouri River by ferry until a bridge between Council Bluffs and Omaha opened in 1872, and the link to San Francisco Bay at Oakland was completed later in 1869. The photographer Andrew J. Russell recorded the scene; Chinese workers do not appear in his best-known image.

Key people

• Theodore Judah: engineer who surveyed the Sierra route and founded the Central Pacific.
• Leland Stanford: Central Pacific president and governor of California (1862–1863).
• Charles Crocker: Central Pacific director in charge of construction.
• Thomas C. Durant: Union Pacific vice-president and organiser of Crédit Mobilier.
• Grenville M. Dodge: Union Pacific chief engineer.

Consequences

The railroad linked national markets, cut freight costs and made travel from New York to San Francisco possible in about a week. It sped the settlement of the West, encouraged by measures such as the Homestead Act, and tied the Pacific coast firmly to the Union. Over the following decades more transcontinental lines were built, including the Northern Pacific and the Southern Pacific, and the growing railway network pushed American railroads to adopt standard time zones in 1883 so that timetables across the continent could be coordinated. Farm produce, timber and minerals from the West flowed east, while manufactured goods and settlers moved west.

The costs were heavy. Native nations lost land, and the railroad brought hunters who helped destroy the great bison herds by the 1880s. Chinese workers, essential to the project, faced growing hostility that culminated in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The financial dealings of the railroads also became a byword for corruption. Other countries followed the American example, most notably Canada, whose Canadian Pacific Railway was completed in 1885.

Today the meeting place is preserved as Golden Spike National Historical Park, where working replicas of Jupiter and No. 119 re-enact the ceremony. Recent anniversaries, particularly the 150th in 2019, have given far more attention to the Chinese workers whose contribution was long left out of the story, and their descendants took part in the commemorations.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1862, 1 July: Lincoln signs the Pacific Railway Act.
• 1863, 8 January: The Central Pacific breaks ground in Sacramento.
• 1863, 2 December: The Union Pacific holds its groundbreaking in Omaha.
• 1865: The Central Pacific begins hiring Chinese workers; Union Pacific track laying starts in July.
• 1867, June: Chinese workers strike in the Sierra Nevada.
• 1868: The Central Pacific crosses the Sierra Nevada into Nevada.
• 1869, 28 April: Central Pacific crews lay just over 10 miles of track in one day.
• 1869, 10 May: The lines are joined at Promontory Summit with the golden spike.

Why it matters

The first transcontinental railroad turned the United States into a nation connected from coast to coast, accelerating economic growth and Western settlement. It also stands as a reminder of the immigrant labour, Native dispossession and political corruption that came with one of the century’s greatest engineering achievements.