Nothing Like It in the World The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869 (2 page)

Ana DeBevoise, on Alice Mayhew's staff, has been a continual source of support, good thinking, and cheerfulness. The people at Simon & Schuster, from Carolyn Reidy and David Rosenthal on down, have done their usual and as always quite superb and professional job, which I have come to expect but which always makes me feel so lucky. Thanks to all of them.

A heartfelt thanks to the men and women who run the railroad museums in Sacramento (one of the best) and Ogden (also among the best) and Omaha (ditto). Hugh and I spent days examining the exhibits, learning, asking questions.

Many railroad buffs were kind enough to send along information. Among them, Nathan Mazer, Bruce Cooper, and Ray Haycox, Jr. A special thanks to Brad Joseph, who built two wonderful models for me, one of the Golden Spike scene at Promontory, Utah, and the other of the drive of the Central Pacific over the Sierra Nevada mountains. Others who helped in various ways are Helen Wayland of the Colfax Historical Society and Joel Skornika of the Center for Railroad Photography and Art, Madison, Wisconsin.

Hugh and I are grateful to Chairman Richard Davidson, Ike Evans, Dennis Duffy, Carl Bradley, Brenda Mainwaring and Dave Bowler of the Union Pacific, and Philip Anschutz of the Anschutz Corporation, for making it possible for us to ride the rails. I wanted to see the track and grade from up front on a train on the original line. Thanks to Davidson and the UP people, as well as my dear friend Ken Rendell, we rode in the engine on a Union Pacific diesel locomotive from Sacramento to Sparks, Nevada (right next to Reno). Together Ken, Hugh, and I were in the cab (with engineers Larry Mireles and Mike Metzger), going around California's Cape Horn, climbing and descending the Sierra Nevada, having experiences of sight, sound, and touch that will never be forgotten.

At one point Mr. Mike Furtney of the railroad company, who was with us, said to me, “You know, Steve, there are thousands of men in this country who would pay us anything we might choose to ask to be up here on this ride.” I said I knew that, although at the time I was not aware of just how many train enthusiasts there are in the country. Mike said, “You take the controls for a while.” I said I wouldn't dare. He said the engineer would be right behind me, and insisted. So I got to drive a train up the Sierra Nevada, tooting on the whistle before every crossing. Somehow they didn't allow me to stay at the controls for the trip down the mountain.

On the return trip, led by Dave Bowler, we got off and walked through the tunnel at the summit—No. 6, as it was called in 1867. We picked up some spikes and a fishplate. For anyone who has been there and is aware of how men armed only with drills, sledgehammers, and black powder drove a tunnel through that mountain, it is a source of awe and astonishment.

Mr. Davidson gave me and Moira permission to ride in a special train going from Omaha to Sacramento for a steam-engine display. The locomotive would be No. 844, with the legendary Stephen Lee as engineer.
The fireman was Lynn Nystrom. This was the last steam engine bought by the UP—in 1943—and it was used until the late 1950s, then neglected, then restored to become the pride of the railroad today.

We rode from Omaha to Sparks in such splendor as we had never imagined. Ken Rendell was with us for the first half of the trip, Richard Lamm for the second. Bob Kreiger was the engineer for the second cab, also steam, called No. 3985.

For the most part we rode in the cab, pulling into sidings for the night. It was extraordinary. I counted more than thirty-seven handles and knobs on the cab's panel in front of me, none with an explanation of how they worked or why they were there. But throughout the trip Steve Lee would adjust them without looking at them.

The engine is sacred for many reasons. It is in the cab of a locomotive that a mere man can control all that power, it is from there and there only that a man riding on a train can see ahead. It is the eyes, ears, brains, motor power, and central nervous system for the long string of cars it is pulling along.

To be in the locomotive of a steam-driven train, riding from Omaha to Reno, was for me, Moira, Ken, and Dick a memorable experience. First of all, Steve Lee and Lynn Nystrom are big guys, 250 or more pounds each, who put every ounce of themselves into their job, which they love more than nearly anyone I've ever met. They are impressive because of their size, their skill, and their personalities. Nearly all the towns we went through in Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada are railroad towns, and so far as we could tell every adult living there knew Steve, Bob, and Lynn. The engineers would whistle, the spectators would wave.

What impressed me the most, however, was the size of the crowds. The local newspaper or the radio station had a small item the day before the UP's 844 came through, announcing the trip. From what we could tell, every resident was beside the tracks, or up on a ridge we passed under, or out on a bluff that offered a view. Thousands of spectators. Tens of thousands. Among them were all ages and people from both sexes, every one of them with a camera.

I've led a life that makes me accustomed to people pointing cameras at me because of the man I'm with, whether a movie star or director or a top politician. I've never known anything like this. The size of the crowds, their curiosity, their involvement in the scene were stunning. Much of the time we were paralleling Interstate 80. When that happened, we
caused a traffic jam. People went just as fast as the train—at sixty-one miles per hour—and gaped. At one point the automobiles were lined up seven full miles behind us. At rest stops, we would see semi-truck drivers on top of their vans, taking pictures with their little cameras. I asked Steve Lee if he had ever stopped to take a picture of a semi-truck. He said no. He added that the semi-truck drivers never stopped to take a picture of a diesel locomotive.

It was then I learned how America has lost her heart to steam-driven locomotives.

One day on the trip we left the 844 for an afternoon in Cheyenne to go by automobile to the Ames Monument and then on to the site of the Dale Creek Bridge. We walked through the cuts that led to the bridge, where we gathered up some spikes and other items. The gorge itself is more than formidable. I can't imagine any twenty-first-century engineer deciding to put a bridge across it. I'm sure there are some who might, but I don't know them.

The most memorable feature of the trip was the presence of Don Snoddy, the historian of the Union Pacific, and Lynn Farrar, who held the same post for decades at the Southern Pacific. They ate meals with us, were with us in the observation car, sat with us at various sidings, and talked. They are wonderful sources. They know damn near everything about the railroads. As one example, riding north of Laramie, they began pointing out grading that had been abandoned. Every town on the line had a story to go with it. Don and Lynn pointed out what happened here, there, all over. They talked about how this was built, and that, or what this or that slang word meant. And anything else. It was a thrill for us to be with them for a week. Then they read the script and saved me from many, many errors. Don was also the driving force behind the trip from Omaha to Ogden.

My thanks to the Union Pacific for making it possible for me and Moira to take the trip that will always sparkle above all others for us.

For Alice Mayhew

Introduction

O
NE
   P
ICKING THE
R
OUTE
1830-1860

T
WO
   G
ETTING TO
C
ALIFORNIA
1848-1859

T
HREE
   T
HE
B
IRTH OF THE
C
ENTRAL
P
ACIFIC
1860-1862

F
OUR
   T
HE
B
IRTH OF THE
U
NION
P
ACIFIC
1862-1864

F
IVE
   J
UDAH AND THE
E
LEPHANT
1862-1864

S
IX
   L
AYING
O
UT THE
U
NION
P
ACIFIC
L
INE
1864-1865

S
EVEN
   T
HE
C
ENTRAL
P
ACIFIC
A
TTACKS THE
S
IERRA
N
EVADA
1865

E
IGHT
   T
HE
U
NION
P
ACIFIC
A
CROSS
N
EBRASKA
1866

N
INE
   T
HE
C
ENTRAL
P
ACIFIC
A
SSAULTS THE
S
IERRA
1866

T
EN
   T
HE
U
NION
P
ACIFIC TO THE
R
OCKY
M
OUNTAINS
1867

E
LEVEN
   T
HE
C
ENTRAL
P
ACIFIC
P
ENETRATES THE
S
UMMIT
1867

T
WELVE
   T
HE
U
NION
P
ACIFIC
A
CROSS
W
YOMING
1868

T
HIRTEEN
   B
RIGHAM
Y
OUNG AND THE
M
ORMONS
M
AKE THE
G
RADE
1868

F
OURTEEN
   T
HE
C
ENTRAL
P
ACIFIC
G
OES
T
HROUGH
N
EVADA
1868

F
IFTEEN
   T
HE
R
AILROADS
R
ACE INTO
U
TAH
J
ANUARY
1—A
PRIL
10, 1869

S
IXTEEN
   T
O THE
S
UMMIT
A
PRIL
11-M
AY
7, 1869

S
EVENTEEN
D
ONE
M
AY
8-10, 1869

Epilogue

Notes

Bibliography

Index

M
APS

From Chicago to Omaha

Nebraska

Wyoming

Nevada

Utah

California

N
EXT
to winning the Civil War and abolishing slavery, building the first transcontinental railroad, from Omaha, Nebraska, to Sacramento, California, was the greatest achievement of the American people in the nineteenth century. Not until the completion of the Panama Canal in the early twentieth century was it rivaled as an engineering feat.

The railroad took brains, muscle, and sweat in quantities and scope never before put into a single project. It could not have been done without a representative, democratic political system; without skilled and ambitious engineers, most of whom had learned their craft in American colleges and honed it in the war; without bosses and foremen who had learned how to organize and lead men as officers in the Civil War; without free labor; without hardworking laborers who had learned how to take orders in the war; without those who came over to America in the thousands from China, seeking a fortune; without laborers speaking many languages and coming to America from every inhabited continent; without the trees and iron available in America; without capitalists willing to take high risks for great profit; without men willing to challenge all, at every level, in order to win all. Most of all, it could not have been done without teamwork.

The United States was less than one hundred years old when the Civil War was won, slavery abolished, and the first transcontinental railroad built. Not until nearly twenty years later did the Canadian Pacific span
the Dominion, and that was after using countless American engineers and laborers. It was a quarter of a century after the completion of the American road that the Russians got started on the Trans-Siberian Railway, and the Russians used more than two hundred thousand Chinese to do it, as compared with the American employment of ten thousand or so Chinese. In addition, the Russians had hundreds of thousands of convicts working on the line as slave laborers. Even at that it was not until thirty-two years after the American achievement that the Russians finished, and they did it as a government enterprise at a much higher cost with a road that was in nearly every way inferior. Still, the Trans-Siberian, at 5,338 miles, was the longest continuous railway on earth, and the Canadian Pacific, at 2,097 miles, was a bit longer than the Union Pacific and Central Pacific combined.

But the Americans did it first. And they did it even though the United States was the youngest of countries. It had proclaimed its independence in 1776, won it in 1783, bought the Louisiana Purchase (through which much of the Union Pacific ran) in 1803, added California and Nevada and Utah (through which the Central Pacific ran) to the Union in 1848, and completed the linking of the continent in 1869, thus ensuring an empire of liberty running from sea to shining sea.

H
OW
it was done is my subject.
Why
plays a role, of course, along with financing and the political argument, but
how
is the theme.

The cast of characters is immense. The workforce—primarily Chinese on the Central Pacific and Irish on the Union Pacific, but with people from everywhere on both lines—at its peak approached the size of the Civil War armies, with as many as fifteen thousand on each line.