What groups comprised the labor force for the first transcontinental railroad?

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. Mormon laborers worked for both lines.



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Many workers contributed to the construction of railroads. On the East Coast, Native Americans, recently freed black people, and white laborers worked on the railroads. On the West Coast, many of the railroad workers were Chinese immigrants. New Jersey issued the first railroad charter in 1815.

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In less than one year, 80 percent of Central Pacific's workforce was made up of Chinese laborers, and by 1867, there were a total of 14,000 Chinese immigrants working on the 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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Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794–1877) came to dominate the railroad industry through the mid- to late 1800s.

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Cornelius Vanderbilt gained control of most of the railroad industry. He offered rebates to customers and refused service for people traveling on competing railroad lines. He lowered the rates on his railroad in order to gain more business.

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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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Gandy dancer is a slang term used for early railroad workers in the United States, more formally referred to as section hands, who laid and maintained railroad tracks in the years before the work was done by machines.

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Gandy dancer is a slang term used for early railroad workers in the United States, more formally referred to as section hands, who laid and maintained railroad tracks in the years before the work was done by machines.

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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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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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Central Pacific Railroad, American railroad company founded in 1861 by a group of California merchants known later as the “Big Four” (Collis P. Huntington, Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker); they are best remembered for having built part of the first American transcontinental rail line.

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The railroad was first developed in Great Britain. A man named George Stephenson successfully applied the steam technology of the day and created the world's first successful locomotive. The first engines used in the United States were purchased from the Stephenson Works in England.

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The building of America's railroads involved African Americans, many working as slaves. Virtually every railroad built in the Pre-emancipation Era South was built using slave labor. During the Civil War (1861–1865) the US Military Railroads (USMRR) employed thousands of freeman and contraband slaves (as seen here).

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