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America's first transcontinental railroad (known originally as the "Pacific Railroad" and later as the "Overland Route") was a 1,911-mile (3,075 km) continuous railroad line built between 1863 and 1869 that connected the existing eastern U.S. rail network at Council Bluffs, Iowa, with the Pacific coast at the Oakland Long Wharf on San Francisco Bay. [1]
In June 1867, two thousand Chinese Transcontinental Railroad workers participated in a general strike (a collective action) for a week along the Sierra Nevada range, demanding better working conditions. [1] By 1867, the Central Pacific Railroad workforce was composed of 80-90% Chinese laborers and the rest were European-Americans. [2]
With federal financing in the form of bonds and generous land grants and with the heroic help of the mainly Chinese and Irish laborers, Central Pacific Railroad working eastward and Union Pacific Railroad working westward combined to complete in 1869 the major breakthrough First transcontinental railroad, which linked by rail the eastern states ...
The First Transcontinental Railroad: Central Pacific, Union Pacific. Simmons-Boardman, 1950. Accessed at This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain. Heier, Jan Richard. "Building the Union Pacific Railroad: A study of mid-nineteenth-century railroad construction accounting and reporting practices."
After slavery was abolished in the United States, Chinese laborers were imported to the South as cheap labor to replace freed Blacks on the plantations. Many of the early Chinese laborers came from sugar plantations in Cuba and after the transcontinental railroad was completed, California also contributed to the labor supply. These laborers ...
Fred Thomas Perris (January 2, 1837 – May 12, 1916) was Chief Engineer of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway, who oversaw the construction of the last leg of the 2nd Transcontinental Railroad from Barstow, California through Cajon Pass and down to San Bernardino and Los Angeles, a task that employed six thousand laborers and is still in use by BNSF Railway and Union Pacific Railroad ...
Starting in 1868, the railroad crews set, and subsequently broke, each other's world records for the longest length of track laid in a single day. This culminated in the April 28, 1869, record set by Chinese and Irish crews of the Central Pacific who laid 10 miles 56 feet (16.111 km) of track in one day.
This opening of a transcontinental railroad to the Pacific coast, as envisioned by the 1862 Pacific Railroad Act, came four months after the Central Pacific and Union Pacific met at Promontory Summit, Utah. On November 8, 1869, the intended western terminus opened at the Oakland Long Wharf, from which ferries connected to San Francisco. These ...