Harshest Winter on Record Doesn't Stop Railroad Progress

Last month, the Director of the American Studies Program at Stanford, Dr. Shelley Fishkin, spoke at the U.S.-China Peoples' Friendship Association regarding her research : The Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project (See part one.) The idea for a railroad put forth by President Lincoln was necessitated by the agonizing time it took to get from west to east, the inefficiency of travel and communication. To construct the most difficult part (the stretch through the Sierra Nevada) one of the owner's, Leland Stanford, suggested using Chinese labor. See Part Two. This was an odd suggestion at the time, as Stanford had promised to get rid of the Chinese. (See Part Three.) Approximately 12-15,000 Chinese worked on the western portion of the transcontinental railroad--an estimated 80-90% of the work force.  Yet, there is little documentation of their participation. (See Part Four.) To correct this wrong, Stanford formed the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project, and working with 150 scholars globally, is leaving no stone unturned. 1. They have looked at payroll records. (See part Five.)

2. The Railroad Project is looking at company reports, government census files, and immigration records. They are exploring letters, books and newspaper articles. 

From these they discovered that the winter of 1866-1867, when the Chinese were working on blasting through the Sierra Nevada Mountains, was one of the harshest on record. There were 44 storms and an average of 18 feet of snow on the summit. One article they found detailed how a snow slide killed 19 Chinese workers. Snow wasn’t the only danger. “Landslides, explosions, blasting accidents, falls, Indian raids, and disease all took their toll,” Dr. Fishkin said.

Chinese railroad workers labor in the snow of the Sierras

Another article noted that during construction of the summit tunnel (1659 feet long through solid Sierra Nevada granite) many people had predicted it would take three years to do what the Chinese workers did in one.  Another feat was documented on April 28, 1869: 4,000 Chinese laborers working with eight Irish rail handlers laid ten miles and fifty-six feet of track in a bit less than twelve hours.  (This was the engineering feat Secretary Volpe mistakenly attributed to American labor in the ceremony in 1969.) That record has never been duplicated in railroad construction.

(To Be Continued. Next: Archeologists Dig Up Pieces to Railroad Puzzle.)