RAILROAD BUILDERS

in Westford in the same way 1,500 miles of flames and desert and mountains separated railroad uniting these sections he ate the towns and industries that would support it the first step would be to select the route and a survey of five possibilities was begun in 53 each section of the country knew it could become the Gateway to the Far West if only it could force the choice of a route starting from st. Paul or Chicago or say a survey couldn't settle this rivalry but at least the facts could begin we would have our first accurate and systematic look at the region beyond the Missouri River the parties were instructed to observe and note all the objects which have an immediate or remote bearing upon the railway [Music] it took three years to carry out the survey and even before the work was complete it was apparent that no route could be chosen the clash of sectional interests kept the country from reaching a decision time was not all that had been wasted one entire survey group at work in the Utah had been wiped out by Indians and none of the sacrifices that had been made seem to have brought the goal of a Transcontinental Railroad any closer to fulfillment in 1859 a quiet talk between two men on the porch of a hotel in Council Bluffs Iowa laid the groundwork for future events one of the men was a civil engineer he'd had plenty of experience with Prairie railroads the other man a small-town lawyer wanted to hear his viewpoint on the best path for a westward railway the central route along the Platte River and the engineer was ready to back his opinion with facts and figures but the lawyer didn't need convincing Indians and trappers and immigrants picked the same trail they can't have all been wrong the two men still remembered the conversation three years later the law that finally authorized the railroad would be signed by the lawyer Abraham Lincoln and the engineer Grenville dodge would be in charge of building one section of it the outbreak of the Civil War ended the sectional stalemate over the railway the southerners had withdrawn from Congress it was possible now to win approval for the central route the job of building it was so important that it was to go ahead while the war was still on the first problem was to finance the railway the venture had to be made attractive to private investors that wouldn't be easy to do many people still thought that a railroad through a wilderness could never be a paying proposition you can't sell tickets to Indians and there's nothing to ship but buffalo bones but the government offered liberal construction loans to get the work started and as another source of funds the builders would receive grants of government land which they could resell to settlers towns would spring into existence and there'd be Commerce to support the railway alternate sections of land 20 of them per mile were granted to the railroad the other sections were held for sale by the government the plan wasn't perfect there were scandals either over the way the builders misused their land rigged their corporations to make excessive profits but the big thing was to get the job done a double assault on the wilderness was planned a new company the Union Pacific was chartered to build westward from Omaha a California company the Central Pacific had been organized to build eastward from Sacramento the two lines would meet somewhere in the wastelands of Nevada or Utah [Music] distance and desolation had to be conquered the railway would be one of the biggest engineering jobs ever tackled the exact route would need to be plotted in detail survey parties with a military escort to guard against Indian action ranged out hundreds of miles ahead of the construction camps close behind the survey parties were grading and construction gangs the Iron Horse would need a smooth and level path trestles and bridges were needed even on the flat plains and it took months of tunneling and blasting to clear away to the Rockies and the Sierras now the track could go down the rail head pushed onward three miles a day it was heavy work but there was no waste motion men were where they needed to be and supplies were ready and waiting progress had been slow at first the end of 1865 saw the Union Pacific only 40 miles west of Omaha and the Central Pacific with 55 miles built had barely reached the Sierra Foothills but with the civil war over thousands of men drifted West to have a hand in this new adventure by 1867 the construction had developed into a race between the Union Pacific in the Central Pacific to see which could cover the most ground and assure itself the biggest share of the government loans and grants the whole nation watched knowing it would benefit no matter who won by now both lines were building through Indian territory but no troops guarded them the Civil War had made many of them as handy with a gun as they were with shovels and fix each line needed eight to ten thousand workers and learned to depend on our immigrant population to supply them Irish laborers turned out to be the backbone of the Union Pacific's force many of them also worked on the Central Pacific but Chinese coolies furnished the biggest chair of the Western lines manpower at first no one had thought they could handle such heavy work but they turned out so well that the Central Pacific was soon contracting for whole ship loads of them to be sent from China it would be hard to say which crew was the most efficient but once to win a $10,000 bet between the rival foremen a Central Pacific gang laid ten and a half miles of track in a day a record no one has ever beaten [Music] the completion of the rails didn't mean the struggle was over Indians fought a steady and desperate delaying action the coming of soldiers and settlers would end forever a nomad life they'd led they struck back at the invaders in every way they could hoping to make the advance of settlement so costly that the white man would yield as he had before but damage was soon repaired the Indians had finally been met and defeated on their own ground the last bitter battles were still to be fought but every new mile of track made it more certain that the Indians hold on the West would be broken dozens of new towns grew up overnight along the completed right-of-way a tide of settlement was spreading westward on May 10 1869 the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific met at promontory point Utah the continent was spanned with rails it was something to celebrate years of sweat and dust and danger had gone into the moment it would take to drive the Golden Spike it took a while for everyone to realize how much the occasion had meant there'd be other celebrations lines were eventually finished on all the routes laid out in the original survey but the first railway had set the pattern for the development of the West the temporary construction camps of the work gangs would grow into towns and cities where there'd been no towns or cities before there was land for all and the railroads wanted to be sure the whole world knew it [Music] they came to the raw new country settlers from back east and immigrants from other lands some of them were there to stay and each year they had a little more to show for their hard work [Music] so in the space of a single lifetime the West was transformed by 1890 the US was dotted with towns from coast to coast the unsettled frontier had ceased to exist and in this final conquest the railroad builder [Music]