In the 1840’s, “Manifest Destiny” became a common belief among Americans. Development of the balance of North America was an entitlement, reserved for the United States. The railroad was seen as the cornerstone to make this notion a reality. In 1848, the Gold Rush turned California into a state almost overnight. Over the next four years, 200,000 new settlers embarked in wagon trains or ships to reach California. But, there had to be an easier way. California wanted to be connected to the rest of the country by a railroad.
The balance of power between free and slave states created a vexing problem as to where a railroad to the Pacific would begin and end. By 1855, five feasible routes had been identified but Congress was deadlocked by the issues of slavery and states’ rights. While Congress debated, the new citizens of California were taking matters into their own hands. By November 1860, four prominent businessmen - Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington, Mark Hopkins and Charles Crocker – and a young civil engineer named Theodore Judah had joined together, bound by a sense of patriotism and enlightened self-interest. Realizing that the Civil War was a certainty, they saw that a railroad over the Sierra Nevada Mountains would tie the strategic resources of California and Nevada to the Union. As the Civil War broke out in 1861, the Central Pacific Railroad of California was incorporated.
Construction of the railroad was now a matter of national urgency. In July 1862, the Pacific Railroad Act empowered the Central Pacific to build east from California and the Union Pacific to build west from Nebraska Territory. The railroads received land grants and bonds to help finance construction. Groundbreaking occurred in January 1863 in Sacramento. The first five years were the most difficult as mostly Chinese laborers carved a path for the railroad over the Sierra Nevada mountains. Through the heat of summer and the harsh mountain winters, the work to blast ledges, cuts, and tunnels was continuous. There were no steam shovels to excavate cuts or power drills to bore holes in the granite for blasting. Everything was accomplished by hand, making the Central Pacific the last, and largest, of the nation's great civil engineering achievements of the pre-mechanized era. Finally, in May 1869, the Central Pacific and Union Pacific were joined in Promontory, Utah to connect the country and further realize the dream of Manifest Destiny.
Today, much of the original Central Pacific Railroad over the Sierras remains in use as an important lifeline of commerce between California and the rest of the United States. The pictures below provide a contemporary view of operations along this engineering marvel. (Click on the pictures to enlarge.)