Editing Central Pacific Railroad (section)

===Authorization and construction===
{{multiple image
|align = left
|direction = horizontal
|total_width = 350
|perrow = 
|header = 
|image1 = Lmc_tdj.jpg
|caption1 = 
|image2 = San Francisco Pacific Railroad Bond WPRR 1865.jpg
|caption2 =
|footer = (Left): CPRR Original Chief Assistant Engineer L.M. Clement<ref>{{cite web|url=http://cprr.org/Museum/Lewis_Metzler_Clement.html|title=Lewis Metzler Clement, Central Pacific Railroad Pioneer|website=cprr.org|access-date=April 7, 2018}}</ref> & Chief Engineer T.D. Judah; (right): 1865 San Francisco ''Pacific Railroad Bond'' approved in 1863 but delayed for two years by the opposition of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors
}}

In the fall of 1860, [[Charles Marsh (railroad builder)|Charles Marsh]], a surveyor, civil engineer and water company owner, met with [[Theodore Judah]], a civil engineer, who had recently built the [[Sacramento Valley Railroad (1852-1877)|Sacramento Valley Railroad]] from [[Sacramento]] to [[Folsom, California]] and was working on the [[California Central Railroad]] to extend the former from [[Folsom, CA|Folsom]] to [[Marysville, CA|Marysville]].  Marsh, who had already surveyed a potential railroad route between Sacramento and Nevada City, California, a decade earlier, went with Judah into the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  There they examined the [[Henness Pass|Henness Pass Turnpike Company's]] route (Marsh was a founding director of that company).  They measured elevations and distances, and discussed the possibility of a transcontinental railroad.  Both were convinced that it could be done.<ref name="auto7">Lindars, Dom.  Manuscript, ''The Ditches of Nevada City,'' Chapter 24, Stories of Fire and Ice, anticipated publication date: Spring 2023.</ref><ref>"Railroad Route Discovered," ''The Nevada Journal,'' November 9, 1860, p. 2, Nevada City, California.</ref><ref name="nevadacityoddfellows_com">{{Cite web |title=Early Odd Fellow Marsh |url=https://www.nevadacityoddfellows.com/about/history/charlesmarsh/ |access-date=2023-01-24 |website=Nevada City Odd Fellows |language=en-US}}</ref><ref name="auto3">Papers compiled by David Comstock, and "The Christine Freeman Directory," Searls Historical Library, Nevada City, California.</ref><ref>"Henness Pass Turnpike Co.," ''Daily National Democrat,'' p. 3, March 22, 1860, Marysville, California.</ref><ref>"Another Pioneer Gone," ''San Francisco Chronicle,'' p. 3, April 29, 1876, San Francisco, California.</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Nevada Survey Maps – CPRR Photographic History Museum |url=http://cprr.org/Museum/Maps/Nevada_Survey_Maps/ |access-date=2023-01-24 |website=cprr.org}}</ref><ref>Wheat, Carl I.  "A Sketch of the Life of Theodore D. Judah," ''California Historical Society Quarterly,'' p. 250, Volume IV, No. 3, September 1925.</ref>
[[File:Gold Spike - First Transcontinental Railroad.jpg|thumb|left|Gold Spike at the [[California State Railroad Museum]], Sacramento, California.  The museum also has a wall-sized painting of the Gold Spike ceremony which includes images of Charles Marsh and Leland Stanford (who were the only two Central Pacific directors to attend the Gold Spike ceremony at Promontory Summit, Utah).<ref name="auto8">Comstock, David Allan.  "Charles Marsh: Our Neglected Pioneer-Genius," ''Nevada County Historical Society Bulletin,'' p. 15, Volume 50, No. 2, April 1996, Nevada County Historical Society, Nevada City, California.</ref>]]

In December 1860 or early January 1861, Marsh met with Judah and Daniel Strong in Strong's drug store in [[Dutch Flat, California]], to discuss the project, which they called the Central Pacific Railroad of California.  James Bailey, a friend of Judah, told [[Leland Stanford]] that Judah had a feasible route for a railroad across the Sierras, and urged Stanford to meet with Judah.  In early 1861, Marsh, Judah and Strong met with [[Collis P. Huntington]], [[Leland Stanford]], [[Mark Hopkins Jr.]] and [[Charles Crocker]] to obtain financial backing.  Papers were filed to incorporate the new company, and on April 30, 1861, the eight of them, along with Lucius Anson Booth, became the first board of directors of the Central Pacific Railroad.<ref>United States Senate, ''Testimony Taken by the United States Pacific Railway Commission,'' Volume V, p. 2617, Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1887.</ref><ref>Central Pacific Railroad, ''Articles of Association'', California State Archives, Sacramento, California.</ref><ref name="auto7"/><ref name="nevadacityoddfellows_com" /><ref name="auto3"/><ref>"Central Pacific Railroad Company," ''Marysville Daily Appeal,'' p. 2, May 3, 1861, Marysville, California.</ref><ref>"Railroad Across the Sierra Nevada," ''Marysville Daily Appeal,'' p. 2, June 30, 1861.</ref>

Planned by Judah, the Central Pacific Railroad was [[Pacific Railroad Acts|promoted by Congress]] by the Pacific Railway Act of 1862 which authorized the issuance of government bonds and land grants for each mile that was constructed. Stanford served as president (at the same time he was elected governor of California), Huntington served as vice-president in charge of fundraising and purchasing, Hopkins was treasurer and Crocker was in charge of construction.  They called themselves "The Associates", but became known as "[[The Big Four (Central Pacific Railroad)|The Big Four]]".  Construction began in 1863 when the first rails were laid in Sacramento.<ref>Kraus, George.  ''High Road to Promontory: Building the Central Pacific (now the Southern Pacific) across the High Sierra,'' pp. 14, 47–48, Castle Books, New York, New York, 1969.</ref>

[[File:Truckee river at verdi (cropped).jpg|thumb|200px|The [[Truckee River]] at [[Verdi, Nevada]], {{Circa|1868–75|lk=no}}. When the Central Pacific Railroad reached its site in 1868, [[Charles Crocker]] pulled a slip of paper from a hat and read the name of [[Giuseppe Verdi]]; so, the town was named after the Italian opera composer.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.verdihistory.org/ |title=A Brief History of Verdi |publisher=Verdihistory.org |access-date=17 January 2014}}</ref>]]

Construction proceeded in earnest in 1865 when James Harvey Strobridge, the head of the construction work force, hired the first [[Cantonese people|Cantonese]] emigrant workers at Crocker's suggestion. The construction crew grew to include 12,000 Chinese laborers by 1868, when they breached [[Donner Pass#Central Pacific Railroad|Donner summit]] and constituted eighty percent of the entire work force.<ref name="Workers of the Central Pacific Railroad">[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/tcrr-cprr/ Workers of the Central Pacific Railroad] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170318015825/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/tcrr-cprr/ |date=March 18, 2017 }}, PBS: The American Experience.</ref><ref>George Kraus, "Chinese Laborers and the Construction of the Central Pacific," ''Utah Historical Quarterly'', vol. 37, no. 1 (Winter 1969), pp. 41–57.</ref> The "[[Golden spike]]", connecting the western railroad to the [[Union Pacific Railroad]] at [[Promontory, Utah]], was hammered on May 10, 1869.<ref name="WDL">{{cite web |url = http://www.wdl.org/en/item/11371/ |title = Ceremony at "Wedding of the Rails," May 10, 1869 at Promontory Point, Utah |website = [[World Digital Library]] |date = May 10, 1869 |access-date = 20 July 2013 }}</ref> Coast-to-coast train travel in eight days became possible, replacing months-long sea voyages and lengthy, hazardous travel by wagon trains.

In 1885 the Central Pacific Railroad was acquired by the [[Southern Pacific Transportation Company|Southern Pacific Company]] as a leased line. Technically the CPRR remained a corporate entity until 1959, when it was formally merged into Southern Pacific. (It was reorganized in 1899 as the Central Pacific "Railway".) The original right-of-way is now controlled by the [[Union Pacific Railroad|Union Pacific]], which bought Southern Pacific in 1996.

The Union Pacific-Central Pacific (Southern Pacific) main line followed the historic [[Overland Trail|Overland Route]] from [[Omaha, Nebraska]], to [[San Francisco Bay]].

Chinese labor was the most vital source for constructing the railroad.<ref name="Chang Fishkin 2019">{{cite book |last1=Chang |first1=Gordon H |last2=Fishkin |first2=Shelley Fisher |title=The Chinese and the iron road: Building the transcontinental railroad |date=2019 |publisher=Stanford University Press |location=Stanford, CA |isbn=9781503608290}}</ref> Most of the railroad workers in the west were Chinese, as they could be hired at a lower cost to do the difficult work.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Sayej|first=Nadja|date=2019-07-18|title='Forgotten by society' – how Chinese migrants built the transcontinental railroad|website=The Guardian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/jul/18/forgotten-by-society-how-chinese-migrants-built-the-transcontinental-railroad#:~:text=From%201863%20and%201869%2C%20roughly,given%20accommodation%20in%20train%20cars.}}</ref> Fifty Cantonese emigrant workers were hired by the Central Pacific Railroad in February 1865 on a trial basis, and soon more and more Cantonese emigrants were hired. Working conditions were harsh, and Chinese were compensated less than their white counterparts, leading to far less white workers being hired. Chinese laborers were paid thirty-one dollars each month {{USDCY|31|1885}}, and while white workers were paid the same, they were also given room and board.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Takaki|first1=Ronald|title=A History of Asian Americans: Strangers From A Different Shore|date=1989|publisher=Little, Brown and Company|location=New York|isbn=978-0-316-83130-7|pages=[https://archive.org/details/strangersfromdif0000taka/page/84 84–86]|edition=Second|url=https://archive.org/details/strangersfromdif0000taka/page/84}}</ref> In time, CPRR came to see the advantage of good workers employed at low wages: "Chinese labor proved to be Central Pacific's salvation."<ref name="white 2011">{{cite book |last1=White |first1=Richard |title=Railroaded: The transcontinentals and the making of modern America |date=2011 |publisher=W W Norton & Co |location=New York |isbn=9780393061260 |quote=Chinese labor proved to be Central Pacific's salvation.}}</ref>

The difficulties faced by the Central Pacific in the Sierra Nevada – particularly the extensive tunneling required – were far more formidable than those encountered by the Union Pacific Railroad in the Rocky Mountains.  The story that Chinese workers were suspended in wicker baskets over vertical granite cliffs at Cape Horn, California, to drill and blast a ledge for the Central Pacific has been repeated and exaggerated by uncritical historians.<ref name="auto6">Spinks, Chuck.  "Baskets and the Cape Horn Myth," unpublished paper, California State Railroad Museum, Sacramento, California, 2019.</ref><ref name="auto4">Strobridge, Edson T.  ''The Central Pacific Railroad and the Legend of Cape Horn, 1865–1866,'' San Luis Obispo, California, 2001.</ref><ref name="auto2">Duncan, Jack E.  ''A Study of the Cape Horn Construction on the Central Pacific Railroad, 1865–1866,'' Newcastle, California, 2005.</ref><ref name="auto5">Harris, Robert L.  "Pacific Railroad – Unopen," ''The Overland Monthly,'' A. Roman & Company, San Francisco, California, September 1869.</ref><ref name="auto">Dadd, Bill.  ''Great Trans-Continental Railroad Guide'', G. A. Crofutt, Chicago, Illinois, 1869.</ref><ref name="auto1">Mintern, William.  ''Travels West'', Samuel Tinsley, London, 1877.</ref>
[[File:44. Cape Horn, C.P.R.R.jpg|thumb|left|Cape Horn on the Central Pacific RR, ca 1876.  Despite the frequently repeated myth of Chinese workers being blown to bits here while suspended in wicker baskets, it never happened.  The cliff here isn't vertical, the rock isn't granite, and no one was lowered over the edge in wicker baskets to set dynamite charges.  The cut was dug down from the top and from each end, not blasted from the side.<ref name="auto6">Spinks, Chuck.  "Baskets and the Cape Horn Myth," unpublished paper, California State Railroad Museum, Sacramento, California, 2019.</ref><ref name="auto4">Strobridge, Edson T.  ''The Central Pacific Railroad and the Legend of Cape Horn, 1865–1866,'' San Luis Obispo, California, 2001.</ref><ref name="auto2">Duncan, Jack E.  ''A Study of the Cape Horn Construction on the Central Pacific Railroad, 1865–1866,'' Newcastle, California, 2005.</ref><ref name="auto5">Harris, Robert L.  "Pacific Railroad – Unopen," ''The Overland Monthly,'' A. Roman & Company, San Francisco, California, September 1869.</ref>]]

There is reliable, primary-source evidence stating that surveyors used safety ropes while staking out the route, but nothing about construction workers using ropes. Digging the cut was done downward from the top, and from each horizontal end of the cut. It is conceivable that a safety rope would have been useful when digging an initial footpath, that could then be enlarged into a shelf, but there was no reason to be suspended by ropes to dig or drill into the face of the cut. It wasn't done that way.  And, most of the Chinese labor was not hired until later.  So, the gangs that did the digging at Cape Horn may have been Irish.<ref name="auto6"/><ref name="auto4"/><ref name="auto2"/><ref name="auto5"/><ref name="auto"/><ref name="auto1"/>

Central Pacific Director [[Charles Marsh (railroad builder)|Charles Marsh]] had extensive civil engineering experience in projects of this nature, both from planning an earlier proposed railroad into the Sierras, and from building ditches and flumes through those mountains for his water company.<ref>Comstock, David Allan.  "Charles Marsh: Our Neglected Pioneer-Genius," ''Nevada County Historical Society Bulletin,'' pp. 10–11, Volume 50, No. 2, April 1996, Nevada City, California.</ref>