What problems did the Central Pacific Railroad face?
Each company faced unprecedented construction problems—mountains, severe weather, and the hostility of Native Americans. On May 10, 1869, in a ceremony at Promontory, Utah, the last rails were laid and the last spike driven.
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The Central Pacific met its greatest challenge at the outset—the towering Sierra Nevada, which presented enormous engineering obstacles and strangling winter snows. Deep fills, rock cuts, high trestles, snaking grades, and 15 tunnels through 6,213 feet of solid granite blooded the CP crews.
Also troubling were fears of the Native Americans across whose land the laborers built their road. There were Native American snipers, raids, livestock rustlings, scalpings, and burnings all along the railroad right of way.
In 1885 the Central Pacific Railroad was acquired by the Southern Pacific Company as a leased line. Technically the CPRR remained a corporate entity until 1959, when it was formally merged into Southern Pacific.
The Central Pacific began laying track eastward from Sacramento, California, in 1863, and the Union Pacific started westward from Omaha, Nebraska, two years later. To meet its manpower needs, the Central Pacific hired thousands of Chinese labourers, including many recruited from farms in Canton.
New York City SubwayIt is the most complex network in the world with 472 active stations serving 27 subway lines. Until 1940, no official map of the subway system existed.
But there was also a dark side to the historic national project. The railroad was completed by the sweat and muscle of exploited labor, it wiped out populations of buffalo, which had been essential to Indigenous communities, and it extended over land that had been unlawfully seized from tribal nations.
However, the race was ultimately a runaway victory for the Union Pacific, which was able to lay 1,085 miles of track to the 690 miles put down by the Central Pacific.
The railroad opened the way for the settlement of the West, provided new economic opportunities, stimulated the development of town and communities, and generally tied the country together.
Laying track and living in and among the railroad construction camps was often very difficult. Railroad construction crews were not only subjected to extreme weather conditions, they had to lay tracks across and through many natural geographical features, including rivers, canyons, mountains, and desert.
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.
About 10,000 to 15,000 Chinese workers came to the United States to build the Central Pacific Railroad. Chinese workers found some economic opportunity but also experienced hostility, racism, violence, and legal exclusion. Many came as single men; others left families behind.
At first railroad companies were reluctant to hire Chinese workers, but the immigrants soon proved to be vital. They toiled through back-breaking labor during both frigid winters and blazing summers. Hundreds died from explosions, landslides, accidents and disease.