DG 'Rusty' Alderson,
TOAST President
Mostly 1830 -1930
Rusty's
All American
Stories
​
Not an official Metra Site
Gilded Age & Train Historian
Train Railfan
Historical Characters, Lincoln Family,
Frontier Arizona, Early Railroads
TOAST email: GAstorybook@gmail.com
The First Trans-RR
Background
The completion of the Trans-rr on May 10, 1869 was the equivalent of landing on the Moon: almost 100 years later! In short, the trans-rr was a big deal and changed America.
Even before gold was discovered in California in 1849, there was talkabout a trans-rr. The primary proponent was Boston businessman Asa Whitney who made a fortune in trading with China. He was tired of traveling to China and determined a trans-rr would significantly reduce his travel time.
​
In the 1840’s & ‘50s Asa Whitney and Josiah Perham were two major promoters of a trans-rr between Lake Michigan and the Pacific Ocean.
As concerns mounted about California loyalty and gold, Congress authorized western surveys to determine the best route
​
The major reason implementation of the trans-rr didn't take place until the beginning of the Civil War had to do with the Northern vs Southern states.​
​
The North or the South had the votes in Congress to make it happen.
​
And, then, there was the question: Would the chosen route favor the North or the South. Illinois Sen. Stephen Douglas favored a route directly west of Chicago while Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton favored a route starting in St. Louis.
​
Meanwhile, two Chicago based railroads, anticipating a Northern victory eventually, hedged their
bets by laying track from Chicago west to Council Bluffs.
The Mississippi & Missouri Railroad originally was created so that the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad
could extend its line across the Mississippi River via a bridge at Rock Island, Illinois.
The Chicago & Rock Island Line bought the Mississippi & Missouri on July 9, 1866, and completed
its line to Council Bluffs in 1869.
Cedar Rapids & Missouri Railroad was leased to Galena and Chicago Union RR (1862)
who then consolidated with Chicago & North Western RR in 1864.
Thus, the Chicago and North Western, the first railroad to reach Council Bluffs, Iowa in 1867
would have the distinction of being the most direct and most popular route between
Chicago and San Francisco when the Union Pacific connected with the Central Pacific
in Utah in 1869.
First Bridge over Mississippi River
As railroads marched westward, they created many interesting stories involving individuals who would become
famous later in their lives. This story about the first bridge over a navigable waterway involved Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln.
The story begins in 1816 when Ft. Armstrong started as a military installation on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River to protect white settlers. It also served as a trading post. This site was chosen for its strategic location in a shallow area of the Mississippi River, making it easy crossings for riverboats.
Within a few years, the small town across from the trading post became a thriving and growing frontier river town of several hundred families and became Rock Island in 1841.
The Short
​
In 1854, Secretary of War Jefferson Davis refused to grant the Chicago & Rock Island Railroad permission to use the federal property at Rock Island, Illinois to build a bridge over the Mississippi River.
Davis sought to prevent a northern transcontinental route.
The railroad sued the Federal Government, but Davis and for unknown reason never appeared in court.
With the bridge being completed in 1856, the North now had the best chance for a northern transcontinental route.
The St. Louis steamboat interests were most unhappy with this bridge as they deemed it a major impediment to their steamboats.
Within months of the completion of the bridge, the St. Louis steamboat interests contracted to have a barge ram the new bridge.
When the barge caught fire, they sued the railroad for not only impeding their steamboats but also for the damage to the barge.
The railroad then hired one of Illinois’ top railroad lawyers: Abraham Lincoln.
The first case ended in a hung jury, which was a win for the railroad. After several appeals, the case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court who ruled in the railroad’s favor in 1862. Who was U.S. President: Abraham Lincoln.
CIVIL WAR
During the 1850's with neither the North or South having votes to create their desired route
of the Trans-rr, the deadlock was broken when the South seceeded from the Union!
​
Pres. Lincoln and Congress wasted no time in passing the legislation leading to the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862
which would be followed by the Railroad Act of 1864.
Did President Lincoln
Rig the Vote to determine
the Gauge for the Trans-RR?
The story told at the time
that President Lincoln did rig the vote
to determine the track gauge.
He and his Cabinet members were discussing the provisions to be included in Railroad Acts.
These would provide the framework for the building of the transcontinental railroad.
Financial issues were paramount of course. However, another
issue had to be addressed: What would be the gauge?
Supposedly, Lincoln polled his Cabinet members telling them
he would abide by their collective vote.
Passing pieces of paper, he asked Cabinet members to
write their recommendation for the gauge.
Lincoln, collected their papers, looked at each one,
and announced without showing the votes to anyone else.
that gauge will be 5 feet
​
When one of Lincoln's major supporters who also
happened to be the president of the New York Central
Railroad System heard this, he called Lincoln to
inform him the gauge will be 4' 8 1/2" which
is now referred to as the standard gauge.
​
Thus, Ezra Cornell, not Abraham Lincoln
created the standard gauge.
First Transcontinental - Not a Sure Thing
On first transcontinental railroad celebrates its 150th anniversary in 2019, people were not so sure it would happen when President Lincoln signed the bill authorizing it.
First, the U.S. was in the middle of the Civil War in 1862, with no end in sight. The succession of the Southern states broke the stalemate allowing the railroad bill to pass.
Theodore Judah had the dream and passion to overcome the biggest obstacle of a transcontinental railroad: laying tracks over the 7,000 foot Sierra Nevada mountains.
Judah sold both Congress and hardware owner Collis P. Huntington on his dream. Huntington then sold the idea to fellow Sacramento businessmen Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, and Mark Hopkins.
However, most Californians were skeptical. Charles Crocker, upon looking at the Sierra Nevadas, exclaimed … “we might as well build an elevator than lay tracks over those mountains… it cannot be done!”
After Judah and Doc Strong had discovered a route over the mountains, Huntington and his friends ousted Judah who then returned to New York City.
No one knows for sure if Judah’s purpose was to find money to buy out Huntington and others. What is know that he died shortly after arriving in New York City from yellow fever.
Since the Central Pacific was a California corporation, the company would have to set up a separate company in Nevada.
Thus, on a late summer day, Huntington and Stanford, each weighting close to 300 pounds, embarked on a wagon trip over the Sierras to Carson City NV.
Their purpose was to obtain permission to build their fledgling Central Pacific. On a mountain pass, their wagon broke down.
Many Californians thought Huntington and Stanford were bluffing about building a railroad over the Sierra Nevadas. The general thought was that they were going to build a toll road.
Alas, they eventually made it to Carson City and received Nevada’s permission to build through the state.
Trans-RR The Race to Utah
The Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads vied to establish routes across the territory from western Iowa to northern California in a bitter contest.
The Pacific Railroad acts of 1862 and 1864 granted land and government bonds to the companies on the basis of how many miles of track they laid, setting the stage for a wild seven-year race.
Hard Work, Big Rewards
While the Central Pacific labored eastward in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada, the Union Pacific built more rapidly westward across Nebraska and Wyoming.
The Associates, as the Central Pacific directors called themselves, were steadfast in their aim -- they wanted their efforts to earn them more than mere existence as a Union Pacific feeder route through California.
So they pushed their crews east, intent on grabbing as much land as possible.
Mileage meant money, power, and a fantastic business opportunity.
Whichever line-neared Salt Lake City, Utah first assured Mormon traffic on its route.
That line that built through Utah's Weber Canyon, east of Ogden, possessed its coal mines -- a rich source of wealth and fuel.
In April 1868, as the Central Pacific entered Nevada, UP executive Thomas C. Durant telegraphed CP head Leland Stanford to inform him that the Union Pacific had surmounted the Rockies.
Stanford ironically replied, "May your descent be easy and rapid.”
A Secret Deal
In September 1868, the Central Pacific learned that Union Pacific grading crews were almost through Echo Canyon, Utah, the last barrier before Weber.
Soon the Union Pacific would lay its line in the coalfields.
Moreover, the competitors now worked the same stretch of Utah desert, grading for two tracks where only one would ultimately be laid.
On the 29th, Central Pacific crews passed a landmark that allowed CP executive Collis P. Huntington to unleash his strategy.
Now within 300 miles of Monument Point, Huntington could legally petition Secretary of the Interior Orville Browning for an extension of the Central Pacific line to Echo Canyon -- over the Union Pacific's grade.
Constant pressure on the secretary and misrepresentation of construction progress won Huntington his approval.
Browning furthermore promised he would keep the decision secret.
"By God, Charley, you must work as a man has never worked before," he wrote his associate, Charles Crocker.
To Stanford he wired, "Go and see him!"
It was a coded order to unleash men across 500 miles of desert to cover the proposed line.
An Embarrassed Retreat
Stanford, supervising in Utah in his typical uncommunicative fashion, did not think it prudent. So he did nothing.
The Union Pacific was entrenched toward Echo Canyon, and advance Union Pacific crews now graded on the proposed line.
"They are all over our line," he complained. "Often on or across."
Huntington grew furious at Stanford, although the latter invited him to Utah to prove Weber had been lost.
Huntington reset his sites on Ogden.
On December 3, 1868, Browning informed the Union Pacific of his decision.
UP chief engineer Grenville Dodge exploded.
The Central Pacific had greatly exaggerated its progress, and was now "pretending to lay grade on the same or very nearly same grade that ours is now building upon."
Dodge had friends from his army days, including Ulysses S. Grant, who would become president in January.
The engineer unleashed a very public war upon Browning.
Under increased scrutiny from press and peers, the secretary retreated from his earlier decision and promise to Huntington.
Secretary Browning declared the government would go over both roads to determine an appropriate meeting point.
Fight to the Finish
Dodge's victory put the railroads in a new pickle.
Shoddy construction work had been approved by both sides in the race to extend across Utah.
And if the Central Pacific was cash-strapped, the Union Pacific was practically broke.
Business practices of the latter had come under recent scrutiny from the press.
Government examination threatened to ruin both enterprises.
Suddenly it seemed advantageous for the railroads to reach an agreement themselves.
On January 30, 1869, Congressman and UP ally Oakes Ames and Dodge met Huntington.
They proposed convergence halfway between the completed tracks. Huntington replied, "I'll see you damned first." He was determined to attain more land.
Plus, as Dodge soon learned, Huntington had secured bonds to Ogden before the close of the previous administration; the Central Pacific held ownership of that town.
Dodge and Huntington met again on the evening of April 8, arguing through the night.
They resumed in the morning and negotiated late into the evening.
Huntington agreed to meet west of Ogden at Promontory Summit.
Dodge conceded that the Union Pacific would turn over its road between Promontory and Ogden at full cost.
The compromise upset Dodge's compatriots but was welcomed by Congress.
Grateful to have the matter resolved, the legislature passed a special resolution approving the decision the next day.
Thus, the 'Golden Spike Ceremony' at Promontory Summit, Utah was scheduled for May 8, 1869.
​
However, the recorded date is May 10, 1869.
​
Why did
Union Pacific's
Executive Tom Durant
Caused the Golden Spike
Ceremony to be delayed?
Everyone was ready for
the Union Pacific and Central Pacific
to link their rails at Promontory Point, Utah.
The ceremony was scheduled for May 8, 1869.
Sacramento, CA, the Central Pacific's starting point,
couldn't wait for their celebration to begin, also scheduled
for May 8.
As Union Pacific's Thomas Durant headed out
from Omaha, he received word that some of
his workers in Utah were not happy. Reportedly,
they had not been paid.
When Durant reached Utah,
the workers stopped his
train for going any further
until they got paid.
Durant, remained on the train,
until monies
arrived from Omaha.
As a result, the "Event of the Century",
the "Golden Spike Ceremony"
at Promontory Point
had to be postponed
until May 10.
The citizens in Sacramento
celebrated on May 8.
Impact of the Trans Railroad
On May 10, 1869, as the last spike was driven in the Utah desert, the blows were heard across the country.
Telegraph wires wrapped around spike and sledgehammer transmitted the impact instantaneously east and west.
In San Francisco and New York, wires had been connected to cannons facing outward across the ocean. When the signal from the spike came through, the cannons fired.
The world was put on notice: the transcontinental railroad was completed and America was moving to the forefront of the world's stage.
The World Grew Smaller
One day later, the first transcontinental freight train rumbled out of California on its way to the east coast.
It carried in its hold an emissary of the Asian markets: a shipment of Japanese teas.
On May 15, though the road required hundreds of thousands of dollars in patchwork along its length, regular passenger service opened for business.
Travelers could make the trip between San Francisco and New York in a week.
No longer did passengers or cargo have to take the treacherous route across ocean and Panama that had killed railroad advocate Theodore Judah.
The coasts were connected -- and the world as Americans knew it had grown smaller.
A Competing Canal
Railroad pioneer Asa Whitney had once dreamed an iron route would re-center the world toward America, making it a conduit of exchange between Asia and Europe.
In this sense, his vision of the grand project remained unfulfilled.
Just six months after the meeting at Promontory Summit, workers half the world away consummated their own monumental feat of engineering.
Opened in November, 1869, Egypt's Suez Canal linked Asia and India to Europe by a single waterway, thus ensuring that exchange between the two regions would continue to circumvent American soil.
Surging Interstate Trade
However, the transformation achieved in intercontinental trade was substantial.
Within ten years of its completion, the railroad shipped $50 million worth of freight coast to coast every year.
Just as it opened the markets of the west coast and Asia to the east, it brought products of eastern industry to the growing populace beyond the Mississippi.
The railroad ensured a production boom, as industry mined the vast resources of the middle and western continent for use in production.
The railroad was America's first technology corridor.
Improved Public Discourse
As it encouraged the growth of American business, so too did it promote evolution of the nation's public discourse and intellectual life.
Americans could travel across the length of the continent in a matter of days, and gaze upon their country in its entirety from the windows of their train cars.
Conversations begun in the east ended in the west.
Books written in San Francisco found homes on New York shelves just one week after their publication.
The rails carried more than goods; they provided a conduit for ideas, a pathway for discourse.
With the completion of its great railroad, America gave birth to a transcontinental culture.
And the route further engendered another profound change in the American mind.
Here was manifest destiny wrought in iron; here were two coasts united; here was an interior open to settlement.
Distances shrank, but identification to land and fellow American grew in inverse proportion.
A Disaster for Native Americans
Not everyone would benefit from that transformation.
The transcontinental railroad was not the beginning of white settlers' battles with Native Americans.
Nor was it the final nail in the coffin.
But it was an irrevocable marker of encroaching white society, that unstoppable force which would force Indians onto reservations within decades.
By 1890, even the Powder River Valley -- the rich hunting ground so hard won by Red Cloud and the Oglala Sioux -- would be lost.
New treaties scattered the Indians to reservations and opened the last great Native American holding to the settlers so steadily branching outward from the iron road.
And the buffalo herds upon which Indians depended had been nearly depleted.
They were easy prey to sport-hunters brought to the plains by the carload.
More disastrously, the railroad introduced the herds to American industrial production, for which they became one more resource to be mined en masse.
Millions of buffalo fell to indiscriminate slaughter, their hides shipped back along the rails to the markets of the East.
​
A Web of Rails
The transcontinental railroad did not long remain the sole venue of travel through America's center.
Lines spider webbed outward from its branch points, conveying north and south the settlers coming west to consume millions of acres of land.
By 1900 a number of routes ran parallel -- the Northern Pacific and Southern Pacific among them -- reaching westward from Mississippi to the Pacific just like the pioneering road.
Books
Nothing Like It In the World by Stephen Ambrose
​
​
Empire Builder by David Bain
Detailed information on the first transcontinental rr
​
​
Railroaded by Richard White
Critical look at the building of western railroads