TCRR’s Western Route
This final blog post about the Transcontinental Railroad celebrates the progress made by the Central Pacific line, from Sacramento, CA to Promontory, UT.
1. First Stop: the planning stages.
All of that happened at the Huntington & Hopkins Hardware Store, owned by two of the “Big Four” who financed the CPRR. The railroad was incorporated in 1861, a year before the Pacific Railway Act was signed by President Lincoln. 1862 was also the year that Leland Stanford was elected Governor of California, even before work on building the railroad began. (The final “Big Four” investor was Charles Crocker.)
Funny story about that levee – Sacramento had been flooded multiple times, especially in 1850 and 1862. They built the levee, then raised the streets of Sacramento up to the buildings’ second floor, instantly giving everyone a basement! Construction on the railroad began in 1862, as well. I told the whole story in this blog post, titled “About that Flood…”
2. The Biggest Hurdle
Crossing the Sacramento Valley was the easy part. Next they had to scale the Sierra Nevada mountains.
It always amazes me how many dignitaries manage to get their pictures taken in these old photographs. These ladies and gentlemen had quite a hike to get to the work site pictured here above Donner Lake.
3. Clear Sailing
Once the CPRR got to the Nevada High Desert, it was clear sailing for a while, at least comparatively. Until they got to the next mountain range, that is.
4. Home Stretch
Utah represented the final leg of the journey for the CPRR. This is where the crews of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific got into a competition to see who could lay the most track in one day. (Download the pdf from the popup for more of the story.) They would have passed each other and kept going if Congress hadn’t decided to join the rails at Promontory.
The featured picture at the top of this post showed this same scene from the front. That painting was finished 12 years after the event, while this photograph was taken as it happened. But you can see the trains, the crowds, even the guy on the telegraph pole in both images. In fact, that guy on the pole is the one who telegraphed “Done!” to the newspapers back east, so everyone would know the TCRR was finished.
Happy 150th birthday, TCRR.
5. The Ogden Terminal
Of course, the story didn’t end there. That was just the beginning. The very next thing the rail companies had to decide was where to exchange cars. You see, the Union Pacific wanted their cars for the trip back East. The Central Pacific wanted their engines to turn around and head back to Sacramento. So they built an enormous exchange depot in Ogden, Utah, just a few miles away from Promontory.
At the Ogden depot, the trains could be serviced and turned around. The passengers could get off the UPRR, grab a meal or a decent night’s hotel rest, and then pile onto the CPRR for the rest of their trip. And if you’re a novelist like me, there would be plenty of time for some high jinks, too. (If you’re curious, you’ll have to read the book. 😉 )
6. Far-Reaching Effects
It didn’t take a historian to realize just what an accomplishment the TCRR was. Here’s a summary from the San Francisco News Letter and California Advertiser, written February 5, 1881.
“No sensible man now fails to recognize the fact that the transcontinental railroad has been the main artery through which has flowed the life-blood, not only of California, but of all the Western States…”
“But for the Central Pacific, San Francisco would still be an unregarded village on the extreme frontier of America — scarcely a part of the United States — and the same would be the case with Oregon, Washington Territory, Nevada, Arizona and Colorado.”
(Thanks to the Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco for preserving this piece of history.)
Featured image credit: The Last Spike, painting by Thomas Hill, 1881, public domain, Wikimedia Commons.
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