Stories of interactions between Railroad Chinese and Irish workers are much more fraught. Hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrated to the United States beginning in the 1840s, and reports of conflict between the two immigrant groups during railroad construction have circulated widely. Many Irish traveled to the Far West, and by the 1850s they had become a prominent part of California’s population at the same time Chinese were arriving in the state. In 1860, the Irish were the second-largest foreign-born group behind Chinese, though the Irish population grew much more quickly, and they soon outnumbered Chinese. In 1867, San Francisco even elected its first Irish mayor, and the Irish continued to be active in politics, becoming a major element in the anti-Chinese labor movement that festered in the 1860s and exploded in the 1870s and 1880s. In railroad work, Irish formed a large proportion of the workforce for the Union Pacific, but hundreds also joined the CPRR as laborers, skilled workers, crew leaders, and supervisors. Mormons also came on the CPRR as it approached Salt Lake City, but there is little known about any interaction between them and Railroad Chinese.
Incidences of serious violence between the Irish and Chinese erupted as the lines of the rival CPRR and UP approached each other in Utah. In February 1869, a Utah newspaper reported an incident in which Irish workers used pick handles and explosives to attack the Chinese, seriously injuring several. The attackers ignored a company order to stop but found that the Chinese were a tough adversary. Chinese workers retaliated by setting loose their own blasts of dirt and rock against the Irish. A news report described Chinese as fighting with “unexpected vigor and accuracy.”
Fighting between the Union Pacific’s Irish and Chinese flared again two months later. Irish workers initiated fighting when they detonated explosions in the direction of the Chinese and seriously injured several. After Chinese responded with their own explosions directed at the Irish, the fighting stopped. Another report from early May 1869 recounts a similar incident, but with workers this time using nitroglycerine against each other. Several unfortunate mules were caught in the cross-fire and were decimated by the blasts. The two sides reportedly went to get firearms, but the fighting stopped before shooting could begin. Through it all, the defiant Chinese reportedly gained “due respect” from the Irish. It is a minor miracle that no loss of life on either side occurred during the mini-war.
In late May 1869, the national periodical Harper’s Weekly devoted extensive space to covering the completion of the Pacific Railway and offered a different narrative of the relations between Chinese and Irish, one that emphasized interethnic connection. The periodical dramatized the completion of the railroad work in Utah with a detailed illustration showing many Chinese and “European” workers blasting hillsides and grading for the roadbed. They appear to be working in coordinated fashion, though also in conflict. In one corner of the illustration, a group of whites torment a Chinese by pulling on his queue. The caption of the image declares that it shows the “mingling of European and Asiatic laborers” in constructing the last mile of the Pacific Railway, and the accompanying article hails the efforts of the two immigrant groups. A “medley of Irishmen and Chinamen” completed the rail line, Harper’s declared, and “typify its significant result, bringing Europe and Asia face to face, grasping hands across the American continent.”
To push the work even further, the two companies pitted the workers against each other in competitions. In August 1868, Railroad Chinese had laid six miles and eight hundred feet of track in a single day. After UP workers also completed six miles of track in a day, Crocker claimed his teams could lay ten miles in a day. Thomas C. Durant, vice president of the UP, bet they could not do so. The ensuing construction challenge became legendary in railroad history, as ten miles of track in a day had never been accomplished before. Top leaders from both companies ventured out into the desert to watch the contest, which would enter history not only for the amount of ground it would cover but also for how much closer it brought the CPRR—and the Railroad Chinese—toward the end of the line.
On April 28, 1869, at seven in the morning, a train whistle marked the start of the CPRR army’s work and the first supply train moved forward. The CPRR had prepared for the effort by loading five trains of sixteen flatcars each full of supplies. Each train carried enough material to cover two miles of track. Chinese had also distributed thousands of ties along the route in advance. Railroad Chinese unloaded kegs of bolts and spikes, fasteners, and iron rails from the sixteen flatcars in just eight minutes, and the supply train pulled away, letting another take its place.
Six-man teams then lifted small flatcars onto the track and loaded them with the rails and other materials that had been off-loaded. These horse-drawn cars were especially designed to slide the heavy iron rails off on rollers to be brought to the end of the completed line. There, Chinese unloaded the bolts, fasteners, and spikes, and two four-man teams of Irish workers lifted the 560-pound rails onto the ties. Chinese returned to straighten the track, drive the spikes into the ties, and bolt the fasteners. Four hundred Chinese followed and, using shovels and tampers, set the track firmly into the roadbed ballast. The small flatcars rolled back and forth along the rails to keep supplies moving. Sometimes they had to be lifted off the track to allow a fully loaded car to come forward. The line was a flurry of activity, with an uninterrupted flow of supplies, workers, foremen on horseback, and carriers of food, water, and tea under the blazing sun. The army laid a mile of track an hour, and at midday, with more than six miles of track laid, it was clear that they would win the challenge. At 1:30, the troops stopped to eat. The location was honored with the name “Victory.”
A camp train pulled up to serve meals to five thousand workers. Did the Chinese eat boiled beef and potatoes, as was the usual fare for whites, or did they have their familiar food? We do not know, but the food was served punctually, and soon the workers resumed their advance. Among the lunch guests attending the unprecedented event was a U.S. Army officer, who shared his observations with Crocker. He said he had never seen such organization as he had witnessed that morning. “It was just like an army marching over the ground and leaving the track behind them,” he praised. “[I]t was a good day’s march for an army.”
The ten-mile line was not just put down on flat ground but had to ascend the slope of Promontory Mountain. There were also curves that required tedious effort to bend the rails manually and attend to the particulars of the roadbed. The railroad army finally concluded its labors at 7:00 p.m., twelve hours after work began in the morning. The workers had handled 25,800 cross-ties, 3,520 iron rails, 28,160 spikes, 7,040 fishplates (a type of fastener), and 14,080 bolts and brought the CPRR three and a half miles to the east of Promontory Summit, the point where the lines of the two companies were to meet. As one journalist described it, several thousand Railroad Chinese and eight Irish rail handlers, “with military precision and organization,” had laid ten miles and fifty-six feet of track in less than twelve hours, a stunning performance that had never been seen before. A San Francisco newspaper declared the feat “the greatest work in tracklaying ever accomplished or conceived by railroad men,” and a railroad historian later described the Chinese effort as “ the most stirring event in the building of the railroad.” Celebratory accounts both then and since, however, included the names of the eight Irish iron movers but not one of the Chinese.
After the end of work, a supply train brought 1,200 men, almost all of them Railroad Chinese riding on flatcars, back to their camp at Victory, near the shores of the Great Salt Lake. Tomorrow would be another workday for the “Asiatic contingent of the Grand Army of Civilization,” as they were called in the press. A week after the challenge, the CPRR sent almost all of the Railroad Chinese back westward to improve the completed line. Only a small force of workers stayed near Promontory to lay the last length of track. It is largely for that reason that few Chinese were present at the ceremony that would occur at Promontory Summit, where Congress on April 9, 1869, determined the two lin
es would meet.
A few days after they had recovered from the ten-mile construction feat, some Chinese—Hung Wah, perhaps, and maybe a few others—decided to take a break. It may have been Sunday evening, a day off. They went to a bluff near Monument Rock, Utah. It was spring, and the vista must have been magnificent. They could see the rail line they had helped complete and, beyond it, the Great Salt Lake. It was a perfect place to enjoy the brown-glazed stoneware jug of Chinese rice wine they had brought along. It had come to them all the way from the Pearl River delta. Astonished at what they themselves had done in laying ten miles of track in a day, they might have reflected on their triumph over the odds, taken pride in their achievement, and celebrated. They also knew the CPRR would soon meet the Union Pacific line, and Hung Wah and the others may have reflected back on the years of toil and speculated about what they might do next with their lives in the months and years ahead. They might have become melancholy on the wine and thought about loved ones separated, far away in the villages, and their desire to return home. Or they might just have celebrated the coming end of railroad work and the chance to drift back to Truckee, Elko, or even San Francisco, where they could enjoy good food, attend an opera performance, or visit a “pleasure palace” that offered fresh opium and women. Bawdy joking and storytelling may have ensued. Done with the drink, they left the empty bottle and returned to camp. There was still work to do in the days ahead. Almost 150 years later, archaeologists studying the ground along the Transcontinental line stumbled across the jug intact, sitting on an outcrop. It had no written message inside, unlike those corked bottles that float for years in the ocean, waiting to wash ashore to tell a story. This bottle, though mute, had something to say. We just need to heed our imaginations and listen.
Though boosters predicted that thirty thousand people would attend the ceremonial linking of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railways, many fewer actually showed up. Accounts do not agree on the number, but it falls between five hundred and fifteen hundred. Almost all were white males, a motley assortment of UP workers, gawkers, and soldiers brought to the site. Fewer than two dozen women and a couple of children attended. Twenty to thirty reporters were present to chronicle the historic day. No bunting or decorations brightened the scene. No band was present to play music during the ceremony. There was no stage or platform for the speakers, who could not be heard by the assembled crowd. All the speeches had been prepared in advance and were merely read.
At around 10:30 on the morning of May 10, “a clean-frocked squad” of eight Railroad Chinese brought the last rails of the CPRR forward to meet those of the Union Pacific, which had been laid by Irish workers. The UP photographer Russell captured this historic moment and aptly titled his image “Laying the Last Rail” (below). Chinese workers put the rails in position and drilled holes in the ties so that the ceremonial spikes would not be damaged when “driven” in. The Chinese appeared rather indifferent to all the goings-on that day, seemingly taking everything “as a matter of course,” according to one journalist. They simply did their work, “wielding the pick, shovel and sledge with consummate dexterity.” Another journalist at the scene expressed his admiration of the efforts of the Railroad Chinese. “John Chinaman began the road,” he wrote in the San Francisco Daily Times, “and it was fit that he should also end it.” The Chinese then removed themselves from the scene, the two locomotives inched forward from west and east, and dignitaries took their places.
The event began a bit past noon and was over in about an hour. A short invocation, a forgettable, less than three-minute-long speech by Stanford, who occupied the center of the event, and brief remarks by other officials took up a few more moments. None of the speakers paid any attention to the workers, Chinese, Irish, or others, who had made the project possible. Company leaders clumsily enacted driving in ceremonial golden spikes with silver-headed mauls into a tie of polished laurel to connect the two lines. These precious materials were then carefully removed for safekeeping. “Done” is what the telegraphic announcement of the perfunctory deed was broadcasted across the country.
To emphasize their own importance, the top officials of the CPRR and UP declared that their combined laid track totaled 1,776 miles, the number of course of the date of the declaration of American independence.
After the brief event concluded, Chinese returned to replace the ceremonial materials with permanent ones. As noted by reporters at the site, it was Chinese workers who laid the rails and drove in the last spikes to complete the Transcontinental. The work was then really done. They and others in the crowd descended on abandoned props and carved them up for souvenirs. What relics Chinese might have kept from the day were lost to fires during the destruction of their communities in America, or perhaps just discarded over the years as the excitement of the day passed. No mementos of Promontory remain in the families of the Railroad Chinese. While the Golden Spike sits in the art museum at Stanford University, which Leland Stanford would go on to found, the polished laurel tie was destroyed in the great San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906. Stanford hosted a brief party in his parlor car for dignitaries and then departed entirely from the scene in his sumptuous train car at 2:00. By 5:00, Promontory Summit was virtually deserted.
Strobridge held his own reception for reporters, military officers, and other visitors. After they had gathered, he stood and invited his “Chinese foreman and leader who had been with him so long,” most likely Hung Wah, and other Railroad Chinese to the head of the table. His assembled guests listened with respect to his acknowledgment of their great contributions to the construction effort and warmly thanked them. The guests then rose, offered rousing cheers to the Chinese, and then they all sat together to dine. Though he did not name Hung Wah, a journalist who may have been present noted that one Railroad Chinese impressed him with his English-speaking ability and “extensive acquaintance with railroad matters.” Newspapers noted the rare spectacle of Chinese workingmen and white male dignitaries sitting down to eat at the same table.
At the lively public celebration in Sacramento, E. B. Crocker, who had followed the actual construction of the CPRR line as closely as anyone with the exception of his brother Charles, hailed the completion of the Pacific Railway as “the greatest monument of human labor” and pointedly praised Chinese in his speech: “I wish to call to your minds that the early completion of this railroad we have built has been in large measure due to that poor, despised class of laborers called the Chinese, to the fidelity and industry they have shown.” Sensitive to the indignities Chinese often suffered, Crocker wanted to make sure then that they received their due recognition. Several months later, Charles offered similar compliment to Chinese during his public speech welcoming Vice President Schuyler Colfax to Sacramento. Reportedly, Crocker “paid high tribute to the Chinese as a working class” and observed that California would greatly benefit from them, “an immigrant population willing to work.”
As historically significant as the completion of the Pacific Railway was, the driving of the “Last Spike” at the formal celebration at Promontory Summit was anticlimactic. The mythic status the event gained over the years has obscured the reality of the actual moment, including the fact that it was held two days late. The celebratory event at Promontory Summit was to have occurred on May 8 but was delayed. During the preceding months, the leaders of the CPRR and UP had engaged in petty negotiation and bargaining to determine the site and had little respect, let alone affection, for each other. Many of the top leaders of both companies did not even bother to attend the event. Of the CPRR leaders, only Leland Stanford made it to the ceremony. Neither of the Crocker brothers nor Collis Huntington and Mark Hopkins traveled out to Promontory Summit.
San Francisco and Sacramento, however, with all their celebratory preparations booked and ready, went ahead anyway as planned on May 8 with huge, spectacular events that shut down both cities. San Francisco held an “immense procession” marked by “unbounded enthusiasm,” according to the l
ocal press. Celebrants filled the streets from early morning through the evening. The day began with the firing of cannons, and “Chinese bombs and crackers” continued to explode throughout the day. Grand celebrations also occurred in all the great midwestern and eastern cities. In Philadelphia, the Liberty Bell in Independence Hall rang out. The last time it had been heard was on the news of Robert E. Lee’s surrender.
At Promontory Summit, however, nothing even remotely pleasant distinguished the event’s physical location. It was isolated, dusty, barren, flat, with no settlement in sight. Only rattlesnakes and buzzards felt at home in the sagebrush and alkaline dust and sand. Water had to be brought in from six miles distant. Where none had stood before, seventeen tents hastily appeared in the days just prior to the ceremony to house a bank, telegraph office, ticket station, eating establishments, and saloons. A couple of boxcars served as temporary offices for the railroad companies. After the event, a few more tents and some shoddy wooden buildings went up for more saloons, a gambling house, stores, brothels, and a Chinese laundry, but Promontory never became important and soon fell into oblivion when the railroad companies decided that their interests would be better served by moving their junction a few miles away to Ogden, an established town. Several hundred Railroad Chinese moved there to continue to work for the CPRR. A year after the driving of the “Golden Spike,” the population of Promontory Summit was just forty people, twenty-six of them Chinese on a maintenance crew. It became a place few people had any interest in visiting or even memory.
Several dramatic incidents and accidents in early May actually made for more exciting history. First, a special train bringing Leland Stanford out to Promontory slammed into a fifty-foot-long log felled by Chinese timber workers that had slid onto the track just past Truckee. One passenger was seriously injured. Stanford had to wait for replacements for the damaged engine and cars. A few days later, a mini-war broke out among the hundreds of Railroad Chinese who had worked on the ten-mile challenge and were encamped at Victory. It is unclear whether the cause of the conflict was money, politics, or ethnic and regional rivalries, but the unity and coordination they had exhibited just a few days earlier during the challenge were no longer. According to news reports, the fighting was serious, involving crowbars, picks, and guns. One Chinese was mortally wounded before Strobridge and several Chinese leaders subdued the combatants. Tensions among both Chinese workers and white company officials mounted as the events at Promontory approached.
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