It spread Anglo-European culture throughout the country and encouraged trade, but the story of the Chinese labourers who built the track has largely been forgotten.
“You can almost feel the pain,” Roland Hsu said as he stood inside the train tunnels along Donner Summit in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains.
The tunnel’s jagged and bumpy walls bear no resemblance to modern-day underpasses. Instead, in the 1860s, teams of Chinese labourers blasted through the granite and painstakingly hand-chiseled 15 shafts through the Sierra Nevada so that the first transcontinental railroad could transport passengers 1,800 miles from Sacramento, California, to Omaha, Nebraska, cutting travel times from six months to just six days and forever changing the country.
“It took four men to manually drill a hole into the granite with a big iron bar,” said Hsu, director of research for Stanford’s Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project (CRWNAP), which aims to shed more light on the experiences of Chinese railroad workers. “A fifth individual would smash it with a sledgehammer. They would then rotate the bar a quarter turn and pound it once more, and so on. They drilled the hole in order to pack the black powder, light it, and run. There were no hydraulics present.”
Because of the difficult construction process, workers could only clear inches per day; it took two and a half years to bore through the nearly 1,700ft-long tunnel at Donner Summit. If you look closely, you can still see the drill marks, according to Hsu.
This monumental engineering feat had far-reaching consequences for the United States. It boosted trade, and by 1880, the railroad was transporting $50 million in freight per year. As new towns sprang up along the rail line, it altered where Americans lived, fueled westward expansion, and reduced the cost of travel. However, the project destroyed forests, displaced many Native American tribes, and rapidly spread Anglo-European influence across the country. It also came at a high cost: an estimated 1,200 Chinese labourers died during the six-year construction period, and those who survived faced racial discrimination and threats.
Amtrak’s Zephyr train still chugs along many of the most difficult sections built by Chinese workers more than 150 years ago. While climbing the Sierra Nevada mountains, the trip offers expansive views of snow-capped peaks and swaths of towering pine and fir trees. (The rest of the line, connecting the San Francisco Bay Area and Chicago, runs on a different route forged after the original Transcontinental railroad.)
It was the greatest engineering enterprise of the 19th Century
On foot, you can also get a better look at the Chinese labourers’ work. A plaque along Donner Pass Road near the Tahoe National Forest draws attention to the “China Wall,” a 75-foot retaining wall that still firmly holds the dirt above it in place today to prevent landslides from burying the track. The Truckee-Donner Historical Society, which installed the plaque, described the wall as a “engineering marvel” built by Chinese “master builders” who stacked stones one on top of the other without the use of cement or mortar.
A section of the railroad that is no longer in use but is accessible to adventurous hikers is just above the wall. The tracks were removed. The path has since become an unmarked trail. It opens up to picturesque views of Donner Lake in the distance at an elevation of over 7,000 feet. Hikers can walk through a series of tunnels, including the nearly 1,700ft-long Tunnel No. 6 – the longest of the 15 tunnels bored through the mountains – as well as snow sheds built to protect the tracks.
It’s eerie – and, yes, painful – to stand at the entrance of one of the tunnels and see the small shaft of sunlight at the other end, knowing how difficult it was to carve that opening and how poorly the Chinese labourers were treated. To expedite construction, they once worked around the clock, each crew shrouded in darkness for hours at a time.
These structures now serve as a reminder of their hard work and sacrifice. They also reflect a long-forgotten legacy in US history. However, with the recent rise in anti-Asian sentiment in the United States, there has been a renewed push – to recognise the role that Chinese labourers played in completing such a monumental feat, including the establishment of the first national Asian Pacific American museum and the passage of new laws in Illinois, New Jersey, and other states to teach Asian American and Pacific Islander history to school-aged students.
“It was the greatest engineering enterprise of the nineteenth century,” Connie Young Yu, a historian whose great-grandfather was a Chinese railroad worker, said. “And to think that it would be the Chinese who would build the rail tracks that would connect the states.”
Chinese labourers were never intended to construct the world’s largest railroad. Congress tasked the Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR) and the Union Pacific Railroad (UPR) with constructing a railway that would connect the country. The CPRR, on the other hand, was unable to hire enough white workers at the time because many of them had left for better-paying jobs in the mines.
In order to meet its deadline, the CPRR began hiring Chinese workers in 1864. Many of the early Chinese labourers had already arrived in California, drawn there by the Gold Rush of the late 1840s and early 1850s. More were recruited from China, with the promise of consistent work and pay. Eventually, an estimated 20,000 Chinese worked on the railroad, accounting for up to 90% of the CPRR’s workforce. According to the CRWNAP.
The Union Pacific Railroad had begun construction westward from the east. The CPRR’s portion of the project was undeniably more difficult, as their tracks had to pass through the mighty Sierra Nevada – a mountain range with peaks rising above 14,000 feet – before connecting with the Union Pacific Railroad’s tracks.
Clearing the brush, grading the hill, and laying down the tracks were all tasks performed primarily by Chinese labourers. They frequently worked 10- to 11-hour days, six days a week, with no breaks during the winter, when storms could dump several feet of snow in a single day. According to the CRWNAP, despite their dedication, some were only paid half as much as white labourers. The CPRR also didn’t bother keeping track of their identities, referring to them as a horde of “John Chinamen” carelessly.
Following the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869, every effort was made to expel all people of Chinese descent from the United States through local and state laws, mob attacks, and lynchings. Some returned to China, while others were hired to maintain the railroad. The remainder attempted to settle in places like Truckee, California, a major railroad town near Donner Summit. They opened businesses such as laundries and restaurants. Chinese immigrants once made up 30-40% of Truckee’s population. However, it quickly became clear that they were not welcome.
