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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]
Hell on Wheels plaque in the Golden Spike National Historical Park Visitor Center in Promontory, Utah, February 2017. Hell on Wheels was the itinerant collection of flimsily assembled gambling houses, dance halls, saloons, and brothels that followed the army of Union Pacific Railroad workers westward as they constructed the first transcontinental railroad in 1860s North America.
The first transcontinental railroad in Europe, that connected the North Sea or the English Channel with the Mediterranean Sea, was a series of lines that included the Paris–Marseille railway, in service 1856. Multiple railways north of Paris were in operation at that time, such as Paris–Lille railway and Paris–Le Havre railway.
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]
Collis Potter Huntington (October 22, 1821 – August 13, 1900) [2] was an American industrialist and railway magnate. He was one of the Big Four of western railroading (along with Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker) who invested in Theodore Judah's idea to build the Central Pacific Railroad as part of the first U.S. transcontinental railroad. [3]
The Chinese moved to California in large numbers during the California Gold Rush, with 40,400 being recorded as arriving from 1851 to 1860, and again in the 1860s when the Central Pacific Railroad recruited large labor gangs, many on five-year contracts, to build its portion of the transcontinental railroad. The Chinese laborers worked out well ...
Workers building railroad tracks in mountainous areas faced many hazards. The Print Collector/Getty Images Even as workers were building the railroads in the second half of the 19th century, it ...
Directed the Union Pacific work crews during construction of the Transcontinental Railroad John Stephen Casement (January 19, 1829 – December 13, 1909) was a general and brigade commander in the Union Army during the American Civil War and a noted railroad contractor and civil engineer .