The Union Pacific can only claim four of the 19 tunnels as their work. The excavation rate increased to nearly 2 feet per day when workers started using nitroglycerine to blast away some of the rock. Workers used hammers and chisels to pick away at the stone, progressing little more than one foot per day despite hour after hour of work. Tunnel excavation was no easy engineering feat in the 1860s. The whiskey-drinking, rabble-rousing work crews made their way west, setting up temporary towns that came to be known as 'hells on wheels.'ĭrilling tunnels through mountains of granite might not sound efficient, but it resulted in a more direct route from coast to coast. The Union Pacific relied mainly on Irish workers, many of whom were famine immigrants and fresh off the battlefields of the war.

The Union Pacific Railroad only managed to lay 40 miles of track by the end of 1865, but with the Civil War drawing to a close, they could finally build a workforce equal to the task at hand. They were paid just $1 per day and worked 12-hour shifts, six days per week. Over 10,000 Chinese immigrants did the hard work of preparing rail beds, laying tracking, digging tunnels, and constructing bridges. The Central Pacific Railroad turned to Chinese immigrants, who had flocked to the U.S. In California, white workers were more interested in seeking their fortunes in gold than in doing the back-breaking labor required to build a railroad. With most of the country's able-bodied men on the battlefield, workers for the Transcontinental Railroad were initially in short supply. Getty Images/Oxford Science Archive/Print Collector/ For each mile of track laid, a ten square mile parcel of land was provided. And the companies got land for their efforts, too. A mile of track laid in the mountains yielded $48,000 in bonds. As the terrain got tougher, the payouts got bigger. For each mile of track laid in the plains, the companies would receive $16,000 in government bonds. Where the two companies would meet was not predetermined by the legislation.Ĭongress provided financial incentives to the two companies to get the project underway, and increased the funds in 1864. The Union Pacific Railroad was granted the contract to lay track from Council Bluffs, Iowa west. The Central Pacific Railroad, which had already built the first railroad west of the Mississippi, was hired to forge the path east from Sacramento. When it was passed by Congress in 1862, the Pacific Railway Act permitted two companies to begin construction on the Transcontinental Railroad. Pictures of the American West/National Archives and Record Administration/Alfred A.

Transcontinental railroad story of us