Ghosts of Gold Mountain

by Gordon H. Chang

  The decision on how: Lewis M. Clement testimony, in Testimony Taken by the Pacific Railway Commission, vol. 6 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1887), 3231–33.

  Railroad Chinese had bored: Gilliss, “Tunnels of the Pacific Railroad,” 155–72.

  Of the many daunting: Edwin L. Sabin, Building the Pacific Railway (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1919), 120–21; and Gilliss, “Tunnels of the Pacific Railroad.”

  The company had workers: E. B. Crocker to Huntington, January 31, 1867, Huntington Letters, Collis P. Huntington Papers, 1856–1901, Microfilming Corporation of America, Sanford, N.C.

  Imagine the noise: Sacramento Daily Union, April 22, 1867.

  Work continued nonstop: E. B. Crocker to Huntington, January 7, 1867, Huntington Letters; Oscar Lewis, The Big Four: The Story of Huntington, Stanford, Hopkins, and Crocker, and of the Building of the Central Pacific (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1938), 81–84.

  When the drifts: David Haward Bain, Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad (New York: Penguin, 1999), 318.

  “Snow Plow. At Cisco”: The caption of another photo of this location taken at the same time establishes the month. It is likely that the year is 1867, following one of the worst winters on record.

  The work of the illustrator: Joseph Becker, “An Artist’s Interesting Recollections of Leslie’s Weekly,” Leslie’s Weekly, December 14, 1905, 570; and Deirdre Murphy, “Joseph Becker’s Central Pacific Trip, 1869,” Commonplace, 7, no. 3 (April 2007): 1–10.

  One of Becker’s: Some writers have interpreted the image as showing Chinese anger toward the train. More likely this is a scene described by journalists like the one quoted in chapter eight.

  A small cache: The drawings are in the Carl Becker Collection, Boston College.

  For a short while: E. B. Crocker to Huntington, February 12, 1867, Huntington Papers; “Nitro-Glycerine Accident,” Sacramento Daily Union, November 30, 1867; Donner Summit Heirloom, August 2012, 1, 4–6; and “The Use of Black Powder and Nitroglycerine on the Transcontinental Railroad.”

  Wanting to make progress: Gilliss, “Tunnels of the Pacific Railroad.”

  7. THE STRIKE

  In January 1867: E. B. Crocker to Huntington, January 10, 1867, Huntington Letters, Collis P. Huntington Papers, 1856–1901, Microfilming Corporation of America, Sanford, N.C.

  Crocker further emphasized: E. B. Crocker to Huntington, January 10 and 31, 1867, Huntington Papers. Crocker repeated his argument about the difficulty of keeping Chinese at work on the “hard rock” in a January 31, 1867, letter. As early as the fall of 1866, reports publicly circulated about the company’s labor problems: “The Central Pacific Railroad Company finds it difficult to retain their Chinese laborers on the hard rock encountered at the South Yuba River. Several gangs have been entirely broken up by the laborers quitting work.” Montana Post, September 8, 1866.

  Leland Stanford, CPRR secretary E. H. Miller: Leland Stanford, E. H. Miller Jr., and Samuel S. Montague, “To the Board of Directors of the Central Pacific Railroad Company,” January 5, 1867, in Testimony Taken by the Pacific Railway Commission, vol. 5 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1887), 3050–51; and E. B. Crocker to Huntington, January 31, 1867. No extant copies of the flyer have been located.

  Work, income, and risk: Shelley M. Bennett, The Art of Wealth (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 2013), 9.

  Field construction boss: Vallejo (Calif.) Evening Chronicle, January 11, 1869, cited in George Kraus, High Road to Promontory (Palo Alto: American West, 1969), 220–21.

  This ten- or eleven-car train: Alta California, November 9, 1868, cited ibid., 216–17.

  Strobridge, the company leader: Vallejo Evening Chronicle, January 11, 1869, in Kraus, High Road, 220–21, and photographs of Strobridge, his family, and the camp train, 180 and 224–25.

  Once, to satisfy their curiosity: Charles Crocker testimony, November 14, 1876, Report of the Joint Special Committee to Investigate Chinese Immigration, 44th Cong., 2nd sess. (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1877), 666–88; and E. B. Crocker to Huntington, January 7 and February 17, 1867, Huntington Letters.

  This pay disparity: CPRR Payroll Record, November 1866, Central Pacific Railroad Collection, MS 79, California State Railroad Museum Library, Sacramento.

  Lewis M. Clement displayed: Lewis M. Clement testimony, in Testimony Taken by the Pacific Railway Commission, vol. 6 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1887), 3217.

  Arthur Brown, the engineer: Arthur Brown testimony, August 26, 1887; and Clement testimony, in Testimony Taken by the Pacific Railway Commission, 6:3603, 3219–320, and 3226; and Alta California, November 9, 1868, cited in Kraus, High Road to Promontory, 217.

  Tunnel engineer Gilliss: Gilliss, “Tunnels of the Pacific Railroad” (1872): 155–72.

  Before the Senate committee: Crocker testimony, Report of the Joint Special Committee to Investigate Chinese Immigration, U.S. Senate, 44th Cong., 2nd sess. (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1877), 671–88.

  Strobridge confirmed: James H. Strobridge testimony, ibid., 723–28.

  Strobridge’s frank assessment: Strobridge testimony, ibid., 723–28; and Crocker testimony, ibid., 671–88.

  A Chinese cook: H. K. Wong, Gum Sahn Yun: Gold Mountain Men (San Francisco: Fong Brothers, 1987), 285.

  When the strike is mentioned: See, for example, the foundational work of Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States, vol. I (New York: International Publishers, 1947); and John R. Commons et al., History of Labour in the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1921). John Hoyt Williams briefly describes the strike in A Great and Shining Road (New York: Times Books, 1988), 181. David Haward Bain’s account, Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad (New York: Penguin, 1999), recognizes the strong position of the Chinese workers. Wesley S. Griswold, A Work of Giants: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962), draws almost entirely on Crocker’s account of his role in the events. Progressive labor historian Alexander Saxton in his classic work The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971) does not even mention the strike, though he expresses great sympathy for the Chinese. The strike also does not appear in Edwin L. Sabin, Building the Pacific Railway (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1919).

  Crocker, years later: Charles Crocker’s version is found principally in his Senate testimony; see Report of the Joint Special Committee to Investigate Chinese Immigration, 666–75.

  In early February: E. B. Crocker to Huntington, February 12 and 17, 1867; and Mark Hopkins to Huntington, February 15, 1867, Huntington Letters.

  In early April: “Going to the Front,” Sacramento Daily Union, April 11, 1867.

  A month later: E. B. Crocker to Huntington, April 27, May 8, and May 16, 1867, Huntington Letters.

  A week later: E. B. Crocker to Huntington, May 8 and 22, 1867, Huntington Letters.

  The press noted: “Decrease in Chinese Population in California,” Daily Alta California, July 31, 1867. Other reports noted an increase in Chinese joining the Central Pacific for work. “More Force on the Road,” Daily Alta California, April 26, 1867. Leland Stanford to Mark Hopkins, May 18, 1867, Huntington Letters; and “The Chinese Labor Question,” Morning Oregonian, March 6, 1867.

  Within days of writing: E. B. Crocker to Huntington, May 27, 1867; Hopkins to Huntington, May 31, 1867; and E. B. Crocker to Huntington, July 2, 1867, Huntington Letters.

  In early June: E. B. Crocker to Huntington, June 4, 1867; Mark Hopkins to Huntington, June 26, 1867, Huntington Letters.

  Then, on Wednesday: Meadow Lake Sun, June 22, 1867.

  On June 24: Meadow Lake Sun, June 29, 1867.

  Why the Railroad Chinese: The date of the strike may also have fallen that year very close to duanwujie, the fifth day of the fifth month in the lunar calendar. Today it is known as the Dragon Boat Festival day. Also see Wolfram Eberhard, Chinese Festivals (New York: Henry Schuman, 1952), 69–96. John Moleda begins to explo
re alternative modes of understanding Railroad Chinese life, including the strike, in “Moral Discourse and Personhood in Overseas Chinese Contexts,” Historical Archaeology 49, no. 1 (2015): 46–58.

  The exact demands: “Facts Gathered from the Lips of Charles Crocker, Regarding His Identification with the Central Pacific Railroad, and Other Roads Growing Out of It,” typescript, MSS, C–D 764, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 30. It is not clear whether this account is of the June strike or another incident, however. Most writers cite “The Chinese Strike,” Sacramento Daily Union, July 1 and 3, 1867, but the accounts may contain inaccuracies. E. B. Crocker privately wrote that Charles objected to the article, as it was “full of errors.” E. B. Crocker to Huntington, July 10, 1867, Huntington Letters.

  The strike apparently: J. O. Wilder in George Kraus, High Road to Promontory (Palo Alto: American West Publishing Co., 1969), 134.

  An agitated Strobridge: E. B. Crocker to Huntington, May 8, 1867; Hopkins to Huntington, June 26, 1867, Huntington Letters; and “Strike of the Chinese for Eight Hours’ Work and Twelve Hours’ Pay on the Pacific Railroad,” Daily Alta California, June 30, 1867. This article, “a special dispatch from Cisco,” stated that the Chinese had struck for $40 pay a month and an eight-hour day.

  The Chinese strike continued: E. B. Crocker to Huntington, June 27, 1867, Huntington Letters; and Sacramento Union, July 6, 1867.

  E. B. Crocker wrote to Huntington: E. B. Crocker to Huntington, June 28, 1867; and Hopkins to Huntington, June 28, 1867, Huntington Letters.

  A brash young visitor: Greg Robinson, “‘Les fils du ciel’: European Travelers’ Accounts of Chinese Railroad Workers,” in Chinese and the Iron Road: Building the Transcontinental and Other Railroads in North America, ed. Gordon H. Chang and Shelley Fisher Fishkin (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019); and Comte Ludovic de Beauvoir, Voyages autour du monde: Australie, Java, Siam, Canton, Pékin, Yeddo, San Francisco, (Paris: H. Plon, 1878), 856–58. Thanks to Greg Robinson for locating this account.

  Then, after a week: E. B. Crocker to Huntington, July 2, 1867, Huntington Letters; Sacramento Daily Union, July 6, 1867.

  The company never learned: “End of the Chinese Laborers Strike,” Daily Alta, July 3, 1867; Mark Hopkins to Huntington, July 1, 1867, Huntington Letters.

  Though the company: Charles Crocker testimony, September 20, 1887, Testimony Taken by the Pacific Railway Commission, vol. 7 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1887), 3659–60.

  The self-discipline: Crocker testimony, in Report of the Joint Special Committee to Investigate Chinese Immigration, 669.

  After the strike ended: E. B. Crocker to Huntington, July 6 and 10, 1867, Huntington Letters.

  Three weeks after the end: E. B. Crocker to Huntington, July 23, 1867, Huntington Letters.

  Railroad Chinese finally: “Letter from the Sierras,” Daily Alta California, November 10, 1867; Ryan Dearinger, The Filth of Progress (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2016), 162–63.

  The labor crisis appeared: E. B. Crocker to Huntington, September 12, 1867; Huntington to Crocker, October 3, 1867, Huntington Letters.

  Chinese workers on later: “Western Slope Intelligence,” Daily Alta California, August 8, 1869; Sandy Lydon, Chinese Gold: The Chinese in the Monterey Bay Region (Capitola, Calif.: Capitola Book Co., 2008), 94–95; “Pacific Slope Brevities,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 17, 1869; The New North-West, November 25, 1870; and Shelley Fisher Fishkin, “The Chinese as Railroad Builders after Promontory,” in Chang and Fishkin, Chinese and the Iron Road.

  Observers who came to see: Robert L. Harris, “The Pacific Railroad—Unopen,” Overland Monthly, September 1, 1869, 244–52.

  At another location: Ibid.

  E. B. Crocker also visited: E. B. Crocker to Huntington, August 10, 1867, Huntington Letters.

  After the hard winter: Clement testimony, in Testimony Taken by the Pacific Railway Commission, 6:3205–7; Samuel S. Montague to Leland Stanford, July 1, 1869, ibid., 6:3481; Arthur Brown to Leland Stanford, July 25, 1887, ibid., 5:2581–82; Arthur Brown testimony, ibid., 6:3601–5.

  The previous summer: Brown to Stanford, July 25, 1887; Montague to Stanford, July 1, 1869. One account claims that Chinese were mainly responsible for building the snow sheds near Truckee but provides no source. Carmena Freeman, “The Chinese in Nevada County a Century Ago,” Nevada County Historical Society Newsletter 33, no. 1 (January 1979): 1–6.

  Chinese were linked: Sue Fawn Chung, Chinese in the Woods: Logging and Lumbering in the American West (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015), 59–65; “Across the Sierra Nevadas: The First Railway Passenger Train from Sacramento over the Mountains,” Alta California, June 20, 1868.

  The company realized: Clement testimony, August 29, 1887, in Testimony Taken by the Pacific Railway Commission, 6:3607.

  The most dramatic example: Gilliss, “Tunnels of the Pacific Railroad”; GJG, “China Wall,” CPRR Discussion Group, http://discussion.cprr.net/2008/03/china-wall.html; and “China Wall of the Sierra,” https://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=23564 (both accessed June 12, 2018).

  Such accolades came: Gilliss, “Tunnels of the Pacific Railroad.”

  A New York reporter: Alfred E. Davis testimony, in Testimony Taken by the Pacific Railway Commission, 6:3620; and “The Central Pacific Railroad,” New York Evening Post, reprinted in Leeds Mercury, December 28, 1867.

  Even snow at rest: Mark Hopkins to Huntington, June 16, 1868; and E. B. Crocker to Huntington, January 31, 1867, and April 20, 1868, Huntington Letters.

  Despite these conditions: E. B. Crocker to Huntington, April 21, 1868, Huntington Letters.

  8. TRUCKEE

  The Summit Tunnel finally: “Across the Sierra Nevadas: The First Railway Passenger Train from Sacramento over the Mountains,” Alta California, June 20, 1868; a shorter version appeared in The Railroad Record, July 16, 1868, 239–40; and see “The Chinese in California,” The Standard (London), September 5, 1868.

  Chinese had made up: Harry Laurens Wells, ed., History of Nevada County (1880; repr., Berkeley: Howell-North Books, 1970), 55, 61–66, 75, 103, 114, and 117–20.

  Following the arrival: Sue Fawn Chung, Chinese in the Woods: Logging and Lumbering in the American West (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015), 109–15; “Truckee Matters,” Sacramento Daily Union, July 23, 1869; George Kraus, High Road to Promontory (Palo Alto: American West, 1969), 182–83; and Calvin Miaw, “Truckee, 1870,” unpublished study, December 1, 2017, in author’s possession.

  Truckee became the center: Jean Pfaelzer, Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans (New York: Random House, 2007), 167–70; Chung, Chinese in the Woods, 109–28; and see Michael Andrew Goldstein, “Truckee’s Chinese Community: From Coexistence to Disintegration, 1870–1890” (M.A. thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, 1988).

  In 1870, Chinese constituted: Goldstein, “Truckee’s Chinese Community,” 14.

  The census also listed: Miaw, “Truckee, 1870”; Barbara Barte Osborn, “Old Chinese Herb Shop Getting a Face-Lift,” Sacramento Bee, March 11, 2004, reprinted at http://www.chssc.org/History/OldChinatowns/chinatowntruckee.html (accessed June 24, 2018).

  The Chinese prostitutes likely: Marian S. Goldman, Gold Diggers and Silver Miners: Prostitution and Social Life on the Comstock Lode (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1981), 69–72, 95–99.

  Most Chinese males: Miaw, “Truckee, 1870.” The Morning Oregon, October16, 1869, noted that Colfax personally witnessed the marriage of a Chinese couple performed by a justice of the peace in Truckee.

  Colfax Ah nevertheless appears: Chung, Chinese in the Woods, 110–11; Daniel Cleveland, “The Chinese in California,” unpublished manuscript, Domestic and Social Life, Daniel Cleveland Manuscripts, 1868–1929, mssHM 72175–72177, Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif.; Miaw, “Truckee, 1870”; and Goldstein, “Truckee’s Chinese Community,” 28, 40.

  As they did elsewhere: Russell M. Magnaghi, “Virginia City’s Chinese C
ommunity, 1860–1880,” Nevada Historical Society Quarterly 24, no. 2 (Summer 198): 130–58.

  The most common leisure activity: Arnop Bainbridge testimony, in Report of the Joint Special Committee to Investigate Chinese Immigration, U.S. Senate, 44th Cong., 2nd sess. (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1877), 222, 224; Stewart Culin, “The Gambling Games of the Chinese in America,” Series in Philology, Literature and Archaeology 1, no. 4 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1891); S. Wells Williams, The Middle Kingdom (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1883), 825.

  Another extremely popular: Magnaghi, “Virginia City’s Chinese,” 139.

  The drop-off in: CPRR Payroll Record, June 1866, Central Pacific Railroad Collection, MS 79, California State Railroad Museum Library, Sacramento; Chung, Chinese in the Woods, 44, 46.

  Turmoil in his personal life: Placer Herald, January 12, 19, 26, May 18, June 29, and July 3, 1867.

  The people of Auburn: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/41711181 (accessed April 30, 2018); Carmel Barry-Schweyer, application for National Register of Historic Places, Auburn, February 8, 2009, U.S. Department of the Interior, http://ohp.parks.ca.gov/pages/1054/files/architectural%20and%20historic%20resources%20of%20auburn%20mpd.pdf (accessed August 20, 2018).

  Within two weeks of the crime: Placer County Herald, July 3, 1867.

  A year later: Placer County Herald, July 18, 1868.

  Paying for sex: Yong Chen, Chinese San Francisco: A Trans-Pacific Community, 1850–1943 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 76–79.

  If Hung Wah happened: This is an imagined experience based on interpreting historical and cultural evidence.

  The desperation of Chinese: “Large Invoice of Celestial Femininity,” Oregon State Journal, March 20, 1869.

  Visiting brothels: Testimony of Otis Gibson, April 12, 1876, in Committee of the Senate of the State of California, Chinese Immigration: The Social, Moral, and Political Effect of Chinese Immigration (Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1876), 27–29.