How many and who did much of the work on the Central Pacific Railroad?

The construction crew grew to include 12,000 Chinese laborers by 1868, when they breached Donner summit and constituted eighty percent of the entire work force. The Golden spike, connecting the western railroad to the Union Pacific Railroad at Promontory, Utah, was hammered on May 10, 1869.



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To meet its manpower needs, the Central Pacific hired thousands of Chinese labourers, including many recruited from farms in Canton. The crew had the formidable task of laying the track that crossed the rugged Sierra Nevada mountain range, blasting nine tunnels to accomplish this.

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Chinese Workers Dominated the Workforce. Chinese laborers at work with pick and shovel wheelbarrows and one-horse dump carts filling in under a trestle built in 1865 as part of the transcontinental railroad.

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The building of the Transcontinental Railroad relied on the labor of thousands of migrant workers, including Chinese, Irish, and Mormons workers. On the western portion, about 90% of the backbreaking work was done by Chinese migrants.

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Volpe's remarks referenced some of the backbreaking and deadly work done on the Central Pacific by a labor force that was almost 90 percent Chinese, many of them migrants from China, ineligible to become U.S. naturalized citizens under federal law.

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Four northern California businessmen formed the Central Pacific Railroad: Leland Stanford, (1824–1893), President; Collis Potter Huntington, (1821–1900), Vice President; Mark Hopkins, (1813–1878), Treasurer; Charles Crocker, (1822–1888), Construction Supervisor.

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Workers would often quit whenever a lucrative strike was reported, leaving the arduous manual labor of railroad construction for a fleeting chance at riches in the gold fields. CPRR managers like Charles Crocker started to consider alternative labor sources in 1864. Bank & Cut at Sailor's Spur by A.

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Rail yard engineers, dinkey operators, and hostlers. Railroad brake, signal, and switch operators and locomotive firers. Railroad conductors and yardmasters.

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More Chinese immigrants began arriving in California, and two years later, about 90 percent of the workers were Chinese. Chinese laborers at work on construction for the railroad built across the Sierra Nevada Mountains, circa 1870s. “Hong Kong and China were as close in travel time as the eastern U.S.,” Chang says.

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One estimate places the cost of the Central Pacific at about $36 million, another at $51.5 million. Oakes Ames testified that the Union Pacific cost about $60 million to build.

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On the western portion, about 90% of the backbreaking work was done by Chinese migrants. About 10,000 to 15,000 Chinese workers came to the United States to build the Central Pacific Railroad.

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Altogether, the Central Pacific Railroad hired an estimated 12,000 Chinese workers, some as young as 12. The Chinese workers, at that time the largest industrial workforce in American history, made up 90 percent of the Central Pacific's total labor force.

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Incorporated in 1861, CPRR ceased operation in 1959 when assets were formally merged into the Southern Pacific Railroad.

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The Transcontinental Railroad was built mostly with immigrant labor. The Union Pacific Railroad hired Irish immigrants and Civil War veterans, including African American freemen. The Central Pacific Railroad hired Chinese and Irish immigrants.

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Leland Stanford, president of Central Pacific, former California governor and founder of Stanford University, told Congress in 1865, that the majority of the railroad labor force were Chinese.

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Cornelius Vanderbilt For the rest of his career, he bought and merged companies together, monopolizing ownership of rail lines from the east coast to Chicago. Wanting to expand his empire further, the Commodore set his sights on the Erie, the longest rail line in the world at the time.

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The challenge was on, “man against machine.” John Henry was known as the strongest, the fastest, and the most powerful man working on the railroad.

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