00:00:09
America's Wild West an untamed land
00:00:12
symbolizing Freedom opportunity wealth
00:00:17
in the middle of the 19th century it was
00:00:20
as exotic a frontier as outer space is
00:00:24
today the Cry of gold in California
00:00:27
triggered an extraordinary Stampede of
00:00:30
Fortune Seekers from all corners of the
00:00:34
world when California became a state in
00:00:37
1850 America dreamed of uniting the
00:00:40
remote West with the
00:00:42
East but there was one hitch the journey
00:00:47
across the continent was like a slow
00:00:49
waltz to the
00:00:51
Moon Travelers had to endure one of
00:00:54
three miserable life-threatening
00:00:57
choices riding on Horseback for a month
00:01:00
through the malaria infested jungles of
00:01:02
the Panama
00:01:04
ismos a 4mon sea Voyage around Cape Horn
00:01:09
or several harrowing months crossing the
00:01:11
American frontier by wagon horse or foot
00:01:16
at the beginning of the Railway age in
00:01:18
this country in the 1830s and 40s our
00:01:21
transportation took place at roughly the
00:01:23
same in in the same manner as it had in
00:01:26
ancient Rome we still moved things by
00:01:28
animal power at 4 mph or at Best in a
00:01:31
sailing ship the railroads changed that
00:01:34
and very suddenly we were able to go 20
00:01:36
30 40 m per hour we were able to cover
00:01:39
in one day the distance it used to take
00:01:42
a week or longer to
00:01:44
go invented in England in 1825 the steam
00:01:48
engine was first imported a year later
00:01:51
to America and put to use in the
00:01:53
Pennsylvania coal Fields by the 1850s
00:01:56
the railroad annihilated distances at 25
00:02:00
mph throughout the East and all the way
00:02:02
to the Mississippi River roughly 10,000
00:02:06
Mi of track linked cities on the east
00:02:08
side of the river by
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1853 but it was a terrifying iron
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monster dirty dangerous and often
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fatal the technology of steam made
00:02:20
explosions breakdowns and fires a
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terrifying
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reality despite the flaws some people
00:02:28
Envision the railroad as is the key to
00:02:30
Westward
00:02:33
expansionism but a railroad all the way
00:02:35
to the Pacific seemed to be an
00:02:38
impossibility 1,600 grueling miles of
00:02:42
vast empty space separated Kansas City
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the rail Road's Western most stop from
00:02:47
the Pacific in between were two massive
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mountain barriers the Rocky Mountains
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and the Sierra Peaks towering over
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14,000 ft and a scorching hot desert
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[Music]
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the dream of building a Transcontinental
00:03:08
Railroad became an allc consuming
00:03:11
Obsession for two young men two
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ambitious civil engineers one lived in
00:03:17
California the other on the East Coast
00:03:20
although they never met they shared the
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same passionate
00:03:25
belief before he was 28 Ted Judah had
00:03:28
already engineered neared the
00:03:30
spectacular Niagara Gorge Railroad in
00:03:32
New
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York but his vivid imagination and
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optimism drove him to conjure up the
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grandest railroad of
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all the biggest obstacle was finding a
00:03:44
route through the difficult seemingly
00:03:46
impassible Sierra Nevada mountain
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range he knew it could be done and he
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devoted every waking hour and every
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increment of his energy to convincing
00:03:55
others that it was possible and it got
00:03:57
to the point where people would
00:03:59
literally cross the street to avoid
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confronting him on a sidewalk he was
00:04:02
known as crazy Judah and called that to
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his
00:04:05
face crazy Judah set out to the Sierra
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on Horseback with him he took his
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notebooks to record a path across the
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mountains but after months of fruitless
00:04:16
searching he ran into a dead end
00:04:19
frustrated to the point of Despair he
00:04:21
received a letter that would
00:04:22
dramatically change everything Dr Daniel
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strong a druggist and physician from
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Dutch Flat had done surveying work
00:04:29
himself for a Wagon Road in the area and
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he pointed out to Judah in a letter that
00:04:33
there was a natural inclined plane a
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ramp which would allow Judah to connect
00:04:37
his surveyed route with a line that
00:04:39
would carry him over the mountains at
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Donner Lake this was an exciting
00:04:43
Discovery and it really transformed
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judah's hairbrain scheme into an idea
00:04:47
that would really be something that
00:04:49
could be
00:04:50
achieved the following summer Judah
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returned to the Siera and completed a
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brilliant survey he located an
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extraordinary series of rid that could
00:05:00
carry a rail line through the Sierra and
00:05:02
then down to
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Nevada while Judah continued his survey
00:05:07
another Visionary in the East dreamed of
00:05:09
a Transcontinental Railroad as a high
00:05:12
strong driven young man Grenville Dodge
00:05:15
rebelled against the confines of New
00:05:17
England society types declaring they are
00:05:20
a stench to my
00:05:22
nostrils Dodge confided his dream to his
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sister soon you'll be Whirled Along by
00:05:29
Steam never dreaming that four years
00:05:31
before it was a wild Open Country
00:05:33
inhabited only by wild beasts and the
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Red
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Man Dodge risked his life to prove it
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could be
00:05:41
done secretly he ventured into Indian
00:05:44
Territory to survey a rail
00:05:47
line but back on the East Coast no one
00:05:50
bought his
00:05:52
dream when the Civil War broke out Dodge
00:05:54
wrangled a Colonel's Commission in the
00:05:56
Union Army but the railroad would remain
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his
00:06:01
obsession back in Sacramento Ted Judah
00:06:04
had more luck persuading four Merchants
00:06:06
to finance his dream they would be known
00:06:09
to history as the big four of
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California Charles Crocker was a crude
00:06:15
loud hard drinking giant with fiery red
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hair who owned a dry goods
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store Charles P Huntington and Mark
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Hopkins operated the largest Hardware
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Enterprise on the Pacific coast
00:06:30
Huntington had come to California to
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mine for gold but gave it up after only
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one morning of
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digging Hopkins was a softspoken
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vegetarian who knew how to drive a
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shrewd
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bargain the fourth member Leland
00:06:46
Stanford longed to become governor and
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would get his wish sooner than even he
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imagined they were all involved with
00:06:54
Republican politics they were
00:06:56
abolitionists they were interested in
00:06:57
making sure California state connected
00:06:59
with the union there were also shrewd
00:07:01
Yankee businessmen who knew a business
00:07:03
opportunity when they saw it the big
00:07:05
four in Judah began the Central Pacific
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Railroad on the second floor of
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Huntington and Hopkins hardware
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store Judah was sent to Washington as an
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accredited agent of the Central
00:07:18
Pacific Ted Judah helped Congress draft
00:07:21
the Pacific Railroad Act that
00:07:23
established two companies Central
00:07:26
Pacific to build East from Sacramento
00:07:28
and the Union Pacific to build West from
00:07:31
Omaha the timing was perfect the year
00:07:35
was 1862 and with the outbreak of the
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Civil War congressmen were anxious to
00:07:40
see the railroad built quickly for
00:07:44
Abraham Lincoln the creation of the
00:07:46
Pacific Railroad was not so much a
00:07:48
commercial act or an act of Technology
00:07:51
as it was a political act we had to
00:07:54
connect the East with the West in the
00:07:56
same way as Lincoln was trying to
00:07:58
preserve the North and the South as one
00:08:01
country the government agreed to loan
00:08:03
companies up to
00:08:05
$48,000 per mile of track built and
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turnover land grants running alongside
00:08:10
the railroad route for each mile of rail
00:08:13
completed the companies would be awarded
00:08:16
20 square miles of land it was a fortune
00:08:19
in real estate and since no meeting
00:08:22
point was determined for the two
00:08:24
competing railroads the owners of the
00:08:26
Central Pacific in the west and the
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Union Pacific in the East got set for a
00:08:32
race to see who could fling the most
00:08:34
track across the
00:08:37
country in Sacramento this urgency
00:08:40
suited the big Four's entrepreneurial
00:08:43
appetite but even before the work
00:08:45
started the big four and Judah came to
00:08:48
loggerheads as to how their railroad
00:08:51
would be
00:08:52
built they wanted to build it as quickly
00:08:55
and cheaply as possible and Judah fought
00:08:57
for quality
00:09:00
feeling betrayed Judah headed east
00:09:02
hoping to find new financial support to
00:09:05
buy his Partners
00:09:07
out in a hurry Judah took the 30-day
00:09:10
shortcut to the east coast through the
00:09:12
ismos of Panama an Overland Crossing
00:09:16
before the canal was
00:09:18
built but on his journey through the
00:09:20
jungles he contracted yellow
00:09:23
fever 5 days after reaching New York
00:09:26
Judah died before seeing a single Spike
00:09:28
driven into a
00:09:30
rail the big four now controlled judah's
00:09:34
vision and set out to fully exploit it
00:09:37
but ahead of them lay pitfalls they
00:09:39
hadn't even thought about like where in
00:09:42
the world could they find 5,000 men who
00:09:45
would devote their heart and soul and
00:09:47
risk their lives to build such an
00:09:49
impossible
00:09:51
railroad 1863 the two pioneering
00:09:54
companies chosen by Congress to build
00:09:56
the first Transcontinental Railroad
00:09:58
broke ground
00:09:59
they were like two competing armies
00:10:01
getting ready for the unknown the
00:10:04
Central Pacific launched from Sacramento
00:10:07
the Union Pacific launched from Omaha
00:10:17
Nebraska co-owner Charlie Crocker the
00:10:20
hard drinking giant filled the role as
00:10:23
the railroad's construction
00:10:25
chief he was not by training or nature
00:10:29
prepared to build a railroad across the
00:10:31
mountains but he possessed a rare common
00:10:33
sense a gift of Leading Men and
00:10:37
he he knew enough engineering to be able
00:10:39
to size up a situation know what
00:10:41
materials he needed and actually make it
00:10:45
happen it very much resembled a military
00:10:48
operation vast numbers of men with
00:10:50
relatively simple tools mobilized in
00:10:54
squads and divisions and groups who went
00:10:56
out to conquer the mountains but
00:10:58
recruiting the muscle to move mountains
00:11:01
was a problem that plagued Charlie
00:11:03
Crocker from the
00:11:05
beginning most men were fighting in the
00:11:07
war or working in the Silver Mines and
00:11:09
able-bodied workers were tough to
00:11:12
find Crocker advertised throughout
00:11:15
California for 5,000 willing men trying
00:11:18
to lure applicants with permanent
00:11:20
employment but he was lucky if he got
00:11:23
more than 800 en
00:11:24
listes the labor shortage was not his
00:11:27
only worry the sheer volume of
00:11:30
construction materials was
00:11:32
phenomenal in the coming years the two
00:11:35
railroad companies would need to utilize
00:11:37
more than 3 million ties hundreds of
00:11:40
tons of gunpowder and over 140,000 tons
00:11:44
of
00:11:45
rail wooden ties were honed in local
00:11:48
sawmills but everything else had to be
00:11:51
imported from the East
00:11:53
Coast that meant every locomotive Spike
00:11:56
Rail and keg of black powder would take
00:11:58
from 5 to 8 months to be shipped by sea
00:12:01
to San Francisco and then fed to
00:12:06
Sacramento from there everything had to
00:12:09
be hauled up into the Sierra by horse or
00:12:13
oxen at the site surveyors would
00:12:15
calculate the cuts and
00:12:17
fills then the greaters would lower
00:12:19
mountains fill valleys and establish a
00:12:22
level Road
00:12:24
bed the track Lane Crews followed the
00:12:26
greaters with the track material the
00:12:29
rails cross ties spikes bolts and rail
00:12:33
joint bars called fish
00:12:36
plates four or five men would be needed
00:12:39
to take off a 650lb rail and drop it
00:12:42
down once one rail was laid a person
00:12:45
with a track gauge essentially a piece
00:12:47
of wood 4' 8 1/2 in Long came to measure
00:12:51
the distance for placing the second
00:12:54
rail a good crew could lay a rail every
00:12:58
30 seconds
00:13:00
then the spike drivers came along and
00:13:02
sat and drove all the spikes
00:13:06
in they made quick progress at first
00:13:09
across the flat Sacramento Valley but
00:13:12
only 20 mi east of Sacramento Crews
00:13:16
reached the foothills of the Sierra and
00:13:18
confronted their first big engineering
00:13:20
challenge to build a 400 fot wooden
00:13:23
Trestle across a Steep
00:13:26
Ravine the Newcastle Trestle was just
00:13:29
the beginning of many bridges in the
00:13:31
wilderness early trestles were amazing
00:13:34
feats of engineering built entirely of
00:13:37
wood and iron bolts work began with
00:13:41
stone masonry footings built in the
00:13:43
riverbed or
00:13:45
Ravine Trestle Builders would lift
00:13:48
pre-cut Timbers up onto the footings and
00:13:51
assemble pieces into a
00:13:52
row row upon row would be tied together
00:13:55
with
00:13:56
Timber at the top went the top eyes than
00:14:00
the
00:14:01
rails erecting trestles was complicated
00:14:04
enough but Crocker's real challenge was
00:14:07
solving his labor shortage that was
00:14:09
getting even more critical as the work
00:14:12
got harder the only available men that
00:14:14
he could find were the Chinese who had
00:14:17
come to California to work in the gold
00:14:19
mines there they encountered tremendous
00:14:21
racial discrimination and were barred
00:14:23
from mining gold anti-chinese sentiment
00:14:26
ran so deep in those days that Crocker
00:14:28
only hired them as a last resort
00:14:31
everybody scoffed at Charlie Crocker
00:14:33
because he hired a few of the Chinese to
00:14:37
test them out see how good they were and
00:14:40
they said oh they're too short they're
00:14:41
too small in stature they can they can't
00:14:43
do that kind of work and they were soon
00:14:47
proved wrong they turned out to be so
00:14:49
good that soon Crocker in his Central
00:14:51
Pacific hired all of the available
00:14:53
Chinese in California and even had labor
00:14:56
contractors recruit workers from
00:14:58
Southern China by 1865 6,000 Chinese
00:15:02
worked on the railroad they carved and
00:15:04
blasted away at The Ridges of the Sierra
00:15:06
Foothills using horsedrawn dump carts to
00:15:09
haul off Earth and rock
00:15:12
debris the Chinese workers lived
00:15:14
separately from the other workers and
00:15:16
even hired their own cook they would eat
00:15:19
their traditional foods which tended to
00:15:21
be high in vegetables um good for you
00:15:25
they boiled their water in the form of
00:15:27
tea which made the Chinese nearly IM
00:15:28
immune to the kind of bacterial
00:15:30
infections that the European laborers
00:15:32
would experience they didn't squander
00:15:34
their checks on payday they didn't go on
00:15:36
3day drunks uh in many respects they
00:15:39
were considered by the railroad to be
00:15:40
the ideal labor
00:15:42
force in the years ahead the Central
00:15:45
Pacific would have as many as 12,000 men
00:15:47
working along miles of line at one time
00:15:51
90% of the Central Pacific labor force
00:15:54
was
00:15:54
Chinese but progress was bitterly slow
00:15:59
in the first 3 years between 1863 and
00:16:02
1866 the Central Pacific only Advanced
00:16:05
40
00:16:07
miles the big four had spent $8 million
00:16:10
and were struggling to pay their bills
00:16:13
Charlie Crocker
00:16:14
complained I would gladly have traded
00:16:17
all I had for the debts I owed and
00:16:19
started all over again and never heard
00:16:21
of the Pacific Rail Road
00:16:29
in the East the Union Pacific wasn't
00:16:31
doing much better their job of building
00:16:34
from Omaha Nebraska Westward across the
00:16:36
gentler flat Prairie should have been
00:16:39
simple but after 3 years they also had
00:16:42
only laid 40 Mi of track with the end of
00:16:46
the Civil War the Union Pacific's fate
00:16:48
changed
00:16:50
dramatically its ranks were flooded with
00:16:52
War veterans who had just fought each
00:16:54
other freed slaves Irishmen Germans
00:16:58
Mormons and a sprinkling of
00:17:01
Chinese men in blue coats and gray coats
00:17:04
dug trenches moved Earth and sweated for
00:17:07
a buck a
00:17:08
day having just fought in the War they
00:17:10
were hardened to living Outdoors
00:17:13
surviving on beans and hard tack and
00:17:15
encountering dangers on a daily
00:17:18
basis they couldn't have been more
00:17:20
different from the shrewd financers in
00:17:23
charge of the Union
00:17:25
Pacific Thomas Durant a former Medical
00:17:28
School GR graduate who turned to
00:17:29
business was more obsessed with lining
00:17:32
his pockets than building a
00:17:34
railroad from the start he had accepted
00:17:38
bribes he had already spent a half
00:17:40
million dollars on the railroad with
00:17:42
little to show for
00:17:44
it to rescue his company Durant tapped
00:17:47
the young Visionary General Grenville
00:17:50
Dodge who 9 years before had surveyed
00:17:53
the Eastern path of the
00:17:55
railroad he was hired at the handsome
00:17:58
salary of of $10,000 a year to be chief
00:18:04
engineer Dodge was a Railroader but then
00:18:06
he was a soldier and at the close of the
00:18:08
Civil War his job in the Army as a
00:18:10
general was basically to clean out the
00:18:13
West to subjugate the Indians and make
00:18:15
the way safe for the Union Pacific
00:18:17
Railroad he maintained a rather brutal
00:18:20
very direct policy of forcing the Native
00:18:23
Americans onto the reservations of uh in
00:18:26
many cases Exterminating entire tribes
00:18:28
who he thought were in the way but if
00:18:30
Dodge and his Union Pacific were ever to
00:18:32
lay track across the empty Thousand Mile
00:18:35
expanse before them they would have to
00:18:38
invent a city on Wheels the likes of
00:18:41
which the world had never
00:18:43
[Music]
00:18:51
[Music]
00:18:53
seen I'm going down the track and I
00:18:57
ain't never coming back and I'll never
00:19:02
get no letter from my
00:19:04
[Music]
00:19:07
home my woman says to build the railroad
00:19:11
took more than man muscle and sweat it
00:19:13
took a tough bold new breed of modern
00:19:16
management invented by the Union
00:19:20
[Music]
00:19:25
Pacific neither of the casement Brothers
00:19:28
was taller than
00:19:30
5'4 but they were organizational dynamos
00:19:34
hired to run the Union Pacific track
00:19:36
gangs they revolutionized railroad
00:19:39
building the older brother John was a
00:19:42
famous General who had been a foreman of
00:19:44
a track building
00:19:45
gang his younger brother Dan who stood
00:19:48
5T tall looked like a 12-year-old boy
00:19:51
requiring a large
00:19:53
hat they were tough they were hard on
00:19:56
their men but they would do anything
00:19:58
their men would do and so that's that
00:20:01
made their men really respect them
00:20:04
highly what lay ahead was one of the
00:20:06
most dangerous tasks imaginable how to
00:20:10
build and Supply a single track pushing
00:20:12
out across hundreds of miles of the
00:20:14
western PLS under threat of Indian
00:20:17
attack to solve the problem the cas
00:20:20
invented the work train this was an
00:20:23
astonishing Innovation a city on wheels
00:20:25
that functioned as the nerve center of
00:20:28
the whole op
00:20:29
operation the locomotive push not pulled
00:20:32
20 or more cars each tailor made for
00:20:35
building and living on the tracks there
00:20:38
was a car fitted with tools a blacksmith
00:20:41
shop a dining car a kitchen dormitories
00:20:45
with built-in bunks housing about 50 men
00:20:48
per car bringing up the rear was several
00:20:52
flat cars loaded with Road Building
00:20:54
Supplies one surprising cargo was a sto
00:20:57
room with hundreds of loaded rifles in
00:20:59
case of an Indian attack They carried
00:21:02
everything with them on the train all
00:21:04
their supplies all their food and except
00:21:06
for meat and of course they had Hunters
00:21:09
that went out and killed the Buffalo
00:21:11
antalope deer whatever they could find
00:21:13
so they were completely
00:21:15
self-contained one of the biggest Supply
00:21:17
problems was getting lumber from making
00:21:20
ties and Building Bridges with no Timber
00:21:23
on the high plains the wood had to come
00:21:25
from the forests of Minnesota and travel
00:21:28
hundreds of miles down rivers and by a
00:21:31
wagon once they orchestrated the supply
00:21:34
line the track layers quickly Advanced
00:21:36
across the Nebraska Plains laying about
00:21:39
a mile of track a day one reporter on
00:21:42
the scene in 1866 described the intense
00:21:46
activity four men seiz a rail less than
00:21:49
30 seconds to a rail and so four rails
00:21:52
go down to the minute it is a grand
00:21:55
Anvil chorus three Strokes to the spikes
00:21:58
10 spikes to the rail 400 rails to the
00:22:01
mile 1,800 mil to San
00:22:05
Francisco working in living at the end
00:22:07
of the track wasn't exactly
00:22:10
fun up at dawn no heat no hot water no
00:22:14
place to bathe or shave uh into the
00:22:17
dining car uh with long Trestle tables
00:22:21
uh you're using the same utensils and
00:22:24
flat wear that the the person before you
00:22:26
had used and the person after you would
00:22:27
would follow with you'd share a cup the
00:22:30
rudest and most miserable of food and
00:22:33
then on out to the end of track and
00:22:35
you'd work all day with a sandwich which
00:22:37
might consist of a piece of bread and
00:22:39
and a hunk of meat and and water or beer
00:22:42
or coffee then you'd come back worn out
00:22:45
exhausted and into the the racks uh
00:22:49
packed into a dormatory car with perhaps
00:22:51
50 other men who also had not bathed
00:22:54
that month and would get up the next
00:22:56
morning to do the whole process again
00:22:59
the men on the front line faced dangers
00:23:01
in handling the volume of
00:23:03
materials accidents happened all the
00:23:06
time if a man was seriously hurt there
00:23:09
was not much hope for him thousands of
00:23:11
miles from the nearest hospital the best
00:23:13
the railroad could do was off from an
00:23:14
honorable death but the most horrifying
00:23:17
danger the Union Pacific faced was human
00:23:21
Indians on the war path
00:23:26
[Music]
00:23:29
the Sue and the Cheyenne witnessed the
00:23:31
advancing track with rage the treaties
00:23:34
that had protected Indian land in
00:23:36
Nebraska and Wyoming were quickly being
00:23:39
unowned at stake was a way of life they
00:23:41
had practiced for hundreds of years in
00:23:44
retaliation war parties raided the union
00:23:47
Pacific's trains ripped up rails and
00:23:50
tore down Telegraph
00:23:52
wires further west the Central Pacific
00:23:55
was left alone most attacks were aimed
00:23:57
at the union Pacific's isolated Advanced
00:24:00
teams such as the surveyors and Bridge
00:24:02
Builders General Dodge was not above
00:24:05
staging rather dramatic Indian attacks
00:24:07
or taking advantage when a government
00:24:09
inspector or politician happened to be
00:24:12
In Harm's Way when the roving bands of
00:24:14
Plains Indians made demonstrations
00:24:17
against the
00:24:18
railroad he managed to convince General
00:24:20
Sherman that thousands of additional
00:24:22
troops were needed and he did indeed in
00:24:25
the end uh superintend the extermination
00:24:28
of the Plains Indians from their
00:24:29
historic
00:24:30
lands General Sherman an Indian fighter
00:24:34
during the Civil War gave the railroads
00:24:36
his full
00:24:37
support the more we can kill this year
00:24:40
the less we'll have to be killed the
00:24:41
next but the more I see of these Indians
00:24:44
the more convinced I am that they all
00:24:46
have to be killed General Sherman
00:24:52
1872 one way the railroads in the
00:24:54
military attacked the Native Americans
00:24:56
was to slaughter the buffalo which they
00:24:59
depended on for their existence over 12
00:25:02
million Buffalo Roam the West when work
00:25:04
began on the railroad sometimes a single
00:25:07
herd would blanket the vast landscape as
00:25:10
far as the eye could see the railroad
00:25:13
companies hired Sharp Shooters to kill
00:25:15
countless thousands of buffalo on the
00:25:17
Great Plains to make way for the train
00:25:20
one Indian chief pleaded for the killing
00:25:22
to
00:25:23
stop listen well your young men have
00:25:26
destroyed the fine temper and the Green
00:25:28
Grass and have burnt up the country they
00:25:31
have killed my game and my Buffalo they
00:25:33
did not kill them to eat they left them
00:25:36
to rot where they fell were I to go
00:25:38
killed your cattle what would you
00:25:42
say would that not be wrong in cause War
00:25:46
cro Chief Bears tooth
00:25:48
1867 his cry went
00:25:51
[Music]
00:25:52
unheeded by the end of
00:25:54
1867 the Union Pacific had spent 4 years
00:25:57
working on on the rails and despite the
00:26:00
Indians the elements and the supply
00:26:03
problems they had laid 300 Mi of track
00:26:06
their Rivals the Central Pacific had
00:26:08
Advanced less than 80 Mi they were stuck
00:26:12
in the Sierra mountains of California
00:26:15
facing a challenge even more Monumental
00:26:18
how to stay alive while blasting a half
00:26:21
mile tunnel with handmade
00:26:25
nitroglycerin high up in the Sierra the
00:26:27
workers on the Central Pacific were
00:26:29
trying to devise a way to build a rail
00:26:31
line through solid Granite to cross the
00:26:35
Sierra Crocker's Chinese Crews needed to
00:26:37
bore through 15
00:26:40
mountains they had no mechanized
00:26:43
tunneling equipment and no modern
00:26:45
explosives they only had the basics
00:26:48
handheld iron drills sledgehammers and
00:26:51
black
00:26:52
powder before there was a tunnel first
00:26:55
there had to be a drill hole for
00:26:57
blasting and it was no easy
00:27:00
task each hole had to be about 12 in
00:27:03
deep drills had to be reshaped and
00:27:05
sharpened by a blacksmith every few
00:27:08
hours the depth of the hole was
00:27:10
extremely critical if it was too shallow
00:27:13
the explosion would blow backwards with
00:27:15
the force of a cannon to speed up the
00:27:18
Blasting work Crews chipped away at both
00:27:21
ends of the tunnel around the clock but
00:27:23
even then the progress was often only 8
00:27:26
in every 24 hour
00:27:28
hours the greatest engineering challenge
00:27:31
would be the summit tunnel that had to
00:27:33
penetrate the Pinnacle of the Sierra
00:27:35
Nevada overlooking Donner Lake at 6,000
00:27:39
ft above sea level they needed to build
00:27:42
a tunnel measuring 20 ft high that would
00:27:45
run over, 1600 ft through
00:27:47
granite even with Crocker's Army of
00:27:50
6,000 Chinese workers the work was
00:27:52
projected to take 3 years to
00:27:55
complete Drilling and Blasting was
00:27:58
painfully slow in good weather but
00:28:01
winter proved far more disastrous than
00:28:03
anyone had ever imagined major snow
00:28:07
storms in the sieras brought work to a
00:28:09
standstill the winter of
00:28:11
1867 through 1868 broke all records with
00:28:15
44 storms some dumping as much as 6 ft
00:28:19
of snow with drifts as high as a four
00:28:22
story
00:28:23
building Charlie Crocker was faced with
00:28:25
a mindblowing challenge that no one had
00:28:28
had planned for what to do with the raw
00:28:30
physical force of millions of tons of
00:28:33
snow the previous winter the Central
00:28:35
Pacific built its first snow plow
00:28:37
measuring 30 ft with the front end
00:28:40
crafted like the prow of a battleship
00:28:42
and waited with pig iron to keep it on
00:28:45
track as many as 12 locomotives were
00:28:51
needed it move the snow A little at
00:28:55
worst the locomotives derailed from the
00:28:57
massive impact of the snow and men were
00:29:00
killed the crews lived and work for
00:29:03
months under the snow they had to cut
00:29:06
passageways between their wooden shacks
00:29:08
and the tunnel
00:29:09
entrance it's difficult to imagine the
00:29:12
hardships that face these men in those
00:29:14
Winters when they literally lived
00:29:15
beneath the snow like moles when they
00:29:18
melted snow for drinking water when they
00:29:20
were cold constantly when sometimes the
00:29:23
only daylight they saw was when they
00:29:24
poked a hole in the roof of these snow
00:29:27
Caverns they worked in tunnels they
00:29:30
worked in
00:29:31
darkness in the worst storms food and
00:29:33
supplies couldn't reach the summit work
00:29:36
crew survived on meager emergency
00:29:39
rations sometimes for
00:29:41
weeks the workers suffered from
00:29:43
pneumonia frostbite and
00:29:46
malnutrition men were terrified of
00:29:48
avalanches that without warning would
00:29:50
crash down on their shelters and bury
00:29:52
people alive the bodies weren't found
00:29:55
until the snow thawed in the spring the
00:29:58
snow was such a colossal problem that at
00:30:00
one time 9,000 workers were needed to
00:30:03
clear the tracks with picks shovels and
00:30:07
wheelbarrows the workers often took
00:30:09
weeks just to clear cuts of ice
00:30:12
sometimes 15 ft thick over the tracks
00:30:16
meanwhile the crews inside the tunnel
00:30:18
labored Around the Clock consuming as
00:30:21
many as 500 kegs of blasting powder a
00:30:25
day blasting was done with black powder
00:30:28
the ancient Chinese formula of charcoal
00:30:30
and sulfur and salt peter but it was a
00:30:32
very inefficient explosive the granite
00:30:34
was so hard that the powder would
00:30:36
literally blast out of the holes and not
00:30:38
fracture The Rock so a new synthetic
00:30:40
explosive nitroglycerin was experimented
00:30:43
with nitroglycerin had been invented
00:30:46
only a few years before by ascanio soero
00:30:49
in Italy the compound was so volatile
00:30:52
that the Central Pacific hired a chemist
00:30:54
to mix a fresh batch every morning in a
00:30:57
special Kitchen near the work
00:30:59
[Music]
00:31:06
side with nitroglycerin the work now
00:31:09
moved twice as quickly but was far more
00:31:11
lethal than black powder Crocker
00:31:14
eventually stopped using it on August
00:31:16
29th 1867 one year after work began the
00:31:21
summit tunnel was finished ahead of
00:31:23
schedule 3 months later Supply trains
00:31:26
were running through it towards Nevada
00:31:28
the 1600t tunnel was the longest in the
00:31:31
world at that
00:31:32
time a modern Marvel in engineering and
00:31:36
human
00:31:37
endurance meanwhile the men of the Union
00:31:40
Pacific were drinking whiskey and
00:31:42
gambling in the
00:31:44
wilderness don't make a dam wherever we
00:31:47
we hit her up for
00:31:49
[Music]
00:31:50
joy as the Union Pacific stretched West
00:31:53
into the barren territory of Wyoming the
00:31:56
railroad created makeshift towns called
00:31:59
Hell on Wheels they were notorious and
00:32:02
Cheyenne Wyoming was as big and as bad
00:32:05
as any of them with 6,000 inhabitants it
00:32:09
was a place where as one man wrote his
00:32:11
wife Vice and crime stalk unblushingly
00:32:15
in the midday
00:32:17
Sun they had every form of entertainment
00:32:20
and vice that you could ever imagine
00:32:23
because the company felt that was a way
00:32:25
to keep their men happy they were Gam
00:32:28
Ling Halls houses of prostitution and
00:32:31
saloons obviously in fact the Union
00:32:33
Pacific probably lost more men from
00:32:36
gunfights than they did actually from
00:32:40
accidents despite these moments of
00:32:42
levity the Union Pacific War crew
00:32:45
stormed West at Dale Creek in eastern
00:32:48
Wyoming Bridge Builders amazingly nailed
00:32:50
together a temporary framework of
00:32:52
Timbers 650 ft long and 130 ft high in
00:32:56
30 days
00:32:58
it was the biggest Trestle work on the
00:33:00
Union Pacific Line the bridge was so
00:33:03
fragile and dangerous that it swayed
00:33:05
when the winds blew up the canyon
00:33:08
inspectors refused to sign off on it
00:33:10
until Durant promised to lash it down
00:33:12
with cables and replace it with an iron
00:33:15
structure within a year over 1,000 Mi
00:33:18
West the Rival construction crew still
00:33:20
battled with the forces of nature
00:33:29
once the Central Pacific cleared the
00:33:31
Sierra Crocker had hoped it would be
00:33:32
smooth sailing through Nevada but no
00:33:35
such luck the winter problem in the
00:33:38
Sierra continued to block their supplies
00:33:40
from getting through causing huge delays
00:33:43
in the track building in desperation
00:33:46
Charlie Crocker came up with an amazing
00:33:49
solution he ordered his men to construct
00:33:52
40 Mi of Timber roof snow sheds over the
00:33:54
most mountainous view stretches of track
00:33:58
these sheds would end up needing 65
00:34:00
million ft of Timber 900 tons of bolts
00:34:04
and spikes and ended up costing the
00:34:06
Central Pacific company $2
00:34:10
million in early April 1868 the Central
00:34:13
Pacific Crews had inched through the
00:34:15
toughest mountains on the rail line in 6
00:34:19
years they had only spiked 119 Mi of
00:34:22
track but it was the most difficult line
00:34:25
ever built in the world the Union
00:34:28
Pacific had completed 540 Mi across far
00:34:32
more gentle territory but they now face
00:34:35
their most formidable challenge the
00:34:37
kinds of mountainous terrain that the
00:34:39
Central Pacific had faced the Rocky
00:34:41
Mountains in Wyoming and the waset range
00:34:43
in Utah but nature was good to them to
00:34:48
cross the Rockies the Union Pacific only
00:34:50
had to bore four tunnels but ahead lay a
00:34:53
battle with the Wilderness that was to
00:34:56
be every bit as torturous is the Central
00:34:58
Pacific struggle with the
00:35:00
[Music]
00:35:06
Sierra the desert of Wyoming in Utah was
00:35:09
like a stark uninhabitable moonscape one
00:35:13
of the biggest problems was not the
00:35:15
threat of Indian or animal attack but
00:35:17
finding water an element essential to
00:35:20
steam locomotives an engine back then
00:35:23
would need 1,000 gallons of water to go
00:35:26
15 mil water tanks were built every 14
00:35:30
Mi along the line when railroaders did
00:35:33
manage to find a well they would use a
00:35:35
windmill to pump the
00:35:37
water they would pump the Water by wind
00:35:40
power into a tank and then when the
00:35:42
locomotive came by they could lower a
00:35:43
spout down into the tender and fill it
00:35:46
with water but it was not always that
00:35:48
easy for many spots they didn't have
00:35:52
reliable wind power some spots they had
00:35:54
to actually set up a steam-driven pump
00:35:57
to pump water out of the well in places
00:35:59
where the railroads pioneered water
00:36:02
technology towns sprang
00:36:04
up in many parts of the desert where
00:36:07
there was no water the railroad had to
00:36:09
haul their water in huge tank
00:36:12
cars long water trains would make daily
00:36:15
runs to dump water into systemns which
00:36:18
were pumped into the Trackside tank
00:36:21
despite it all the Union Pacific kept
00:36:26
moving it was now February
00:36:29
1869 nearly 6 years since construction
00:36:32
began with the Union Pacific by now
00:36:35
approaching Salt Lake City the Central
00:36:38
Pacific had raced halfway across Nevada
00:36:41
and was moving quickly toward Utah the
00:36:44
race was heating up with a Connecting
00:36:47
Point still not determined the railroad
00:36:50
owners wanted to build as many miles of
00:36:52
track as possible to collect government
00:36:54
land grants and Loans ahead of them was
00:36:57
a the Sprint to the Finish Line fought
00:36:59
by everyone from the lowliest spikeman
00:37:01
to the richest railroad baron while the
00:37:04
country waited for the outcome spring of
00:37:08
1869 as the Army race to reach the
00:37:11
prospering Mormon communities in Utah
00:37:13
Salt Lake Valley an incredibly bizarre
00:37:16
development took place with no
00:37:19
predetermined Connecting Point the two
00:37:22
competing grading Crews literally graded
00:37:25
Road beds past each other for over 250
00:37:29
Mi each laying claim to the right of
00:37:32
way the government ordered the railroads
00:37:35
to fix a meeting point or we'll do it
00:37:37
for
00:37:39
you Grenville Dodge and Callis
00:37:42
Huntington met in Washington and
00:37:43
hammered out a
00:37:45
compromise both companies would profit
00:37:48
from the Salt Lake City traffic the
00:37:50
tracks would join the following month at
00:37:52
Promontory Summit Utah with no more
00:37:55
subsidies being issued the race was
00:37:57
ially over but the track layers didn't
00:38:00
slow down as the tracks grew closer
00:38:03
together and it became apparent that the
00:38:05
Pacific Railroad was going to be a
00:38:07
reality and not just a dream they began
00:38:10
feeling that they were truly part of a
00:38:12
great National work they began to know
00:38:15
that they were doing something that
00:38:16
would outlive them Outlast them that
00:38:19
even down to the most Anonymous man with
00:38:21
a shovel in his hands this was going to
00:38:23
be a work for the ages and they had a
00:38:25
part in it as the two lines moved toward
00:38:28
Promontory one of the world's most
00:38:30
amazing bets was wagered the central
00:38:34
Pacific's Charlie Crocker had once
00:38:36
boasted to Thomas Durant the head of the
00:38:38
Union Pacific that his men could lay 10
00:38:41
miles of track in a single day Durant St
00:38:45
$10,000 that it was
00:38:47
impossible Crocker chose April 28th to
00:38:50
be 10 Mile day for the handpick team of
00:38:53
Crocker's workers this event was the
00:38:56
ultimate test of of endurance the day
00:38:59
began with Chinese workers shuttling
00:39:01
iron on horsedrawn hand cars to a crew
00:39:03
of eight Irish Rail carriers and the
00:39:06
track laying team they work without a
00:39:08
break and refus to eat a
00:39:11
lunch the track moved forward at a rate
00:39:14
of almost a m an hour in 12 hours the
00:39:17
Central Pacific workers spiked 10 Mi and
00:39:20
56 ft of track and lifted over 2 million
00:39:24
lb of iron rail a record that still
00:39:27
stands
00:39:28
today for their feet they were given 4
00:39:31
days
00:39:33
pay as the crews neared Promontory plans
00:39:36
were underway for a ceremony celebrating
00:39:38
the joining of the lines the moment that
00:39:41
the nation had been waiting for two
00:39:44
brand new trains with railroad officials
00:39:46
set out from Omaha and Sacramento to
00:39:49
meet at the Finish
00:39:51
Line the scene at Promontory that May
00:39:54
10th was one of contrast the grizzled
00:39:57
Veterans of this incredible campaign in
00:40:00
their Dusty clothes with their calloused
00:40:02
hands with the leadership of the
00:40:05
railroads in their fancy private cars
00:40:07
with their champagne and their fresh
00:40:09
fruits the contrast was
00:40:11
striking Western Union stood by to
00:40:14
Signal the moment the last Spike was
00:40:16
driven like the Apollo landing on the
00:40:18
moon virtually all of America waited for
00:40:20
the
00:40:22
news at 11:15 a.m. the central Pacific's
00:40:26
Jupiter pulled forward forward to the
00:40:27
union Pacific's number
00:40:30
119 each crowded with exuberant
00:40:33
exhausted
00:40:34
workers the ceremony called for Thomas
00:40:37
Durant the head of the Union Pacific and
00:40:39
Leland Stanford president of the Central
00:40:41
Pacific to drive not one Golden Spike as
00:40:44
Legend has it but four
00:40:48
spikes two gold one silver and the
00:40:51
fourth a mixture of gold silver and iron
00:40:55
Governor Stanford stepped up made one
00:40:58
huge swing and missed the spike and hit
00:41:01
the tie a huge Roar of laughter went up
00:41:04
from the workers who had probably driven
00:41:07
several hundred thousand spikes in their
00:41:10
career so then they offered the spike
00:41:13
mall to Dr Durant who had apparently a
00:41:18
slight hangover and he couldn't even hit
00:41:20
the spike at all and he hit the the dirt
00:41:23
they finally had to hand the spike mall
00:41:26
to a worker of the railroad who drove it
00:41:29
home the telegraph operator Tapped Out
00:41:32
the message done that was transmitted
00:41:36
within seconds around the country the
00:41:38
nation was ecstatic cannons were fired
00:41:41
whistles blew and parades marched down
00:41:44
Main Street the dream of a United Nation
00:41:47
Coast to Coast was finally
00:41:50
realized the first Transcontinental
00:41:52
Railroad ended up taking 6 years to
00:41:55
complete coming in ahead of schedule
00:41:58
even to this day no one knows exactly
00:42:00
how many men sacrificed their lives the
00:42:03
two railroad companies were awarded a
00:42:05
total of almost 21 million Acres more
00:42:09
land than Massachusetts Connecticut and
00:42:11
Vermont combined Theodor judah's Wildest
00:42:14
Dream had been realized 6 years later a
00:42:18
painting of the ceremony at Promontory
00:42:20
included him in tribute Grenville Dodge
00:42:23
would have more railroad challenges in
00:42:26
the years ahead but nothing would
00:42:28
compare to this Glory closing the tracks
00:42:31
of promontory was in many ways the last
00:42:35
act in creating the United States and it
00:42:38
was just the beginning of a new period a
00:42:43
new set of actors a new set of tools a
00:42:46
new set of values that would radically
00:42:49
remake would completely transform the
00:42:51
world they lived in and give us the
00:42:54
world we exist in today
