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Building the Pacific Railway by Edwin L Sabin Hard Cover
Building the Pacific Railway by Edwin L Sabin
Hard Cover Foldout map
317 pages
Copyright 1919
The construction story of America's first iron thoroughfare between the Missouri River and California , from the inception of the great idea to the day, May 10 1869, when the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific joined trucks at Promontory Point, Utah to form the nation's transonctinental.
CONTENTS
I. The Start13
Ii. Central Pacific Men And Methods 41
Iii. Union Pacific Men And Methods 69
Iv. Progress Of The Central Pacific 96
V. Progress Of The Union Pacific 129
Vi. The Race To The Finish Q65
Vii. The Finish 200
Viii. Blood On The Trails 231
Ix. The "Roaring" Towns 254
X. Tourists To End O' Track. 275
Xi. Checking Up 304
Index 309
ILLUSTRATIONS
The Final ActFrontispiece
Collis P. Huntington 70
Charles Crocker 70
General " Jack" Casement 70
Oakes Ames 70
Fighting the Sierra Snow 120
Dutch Flat Mining Camp, 1865 120
Westward Across the Plains, 1866 158
Defending the Rails, 1867 158
Grading Outfits Going to the Fore, Union Pacific Railway, 1867 174
Building Through the Forest 188
Building the Telegraph Line 188
The moo-Mile Tree in Weber Canyon 198
On the Last Leg 198
"Crocker's Pets" at Work . 204
Central Pacific Construction Camp, 1869 204
The Engines Touch Noses, Promontory Summit, May to, 1869 226
Union Pacific Locomotive 119 230
In the Days of the Old Wood Burners 230
The General Grant Inspecting Party at Fort Sanders, Wyoming, July, 1868 290
The "Lincoln Car" 302
Interior of an Early Pullman Car, UPRR 302
Map 40
FOREWORD
FIFTY years have passed since most of the events noted within this volume were new. On May ro, 1869, at Promontory Point, fifty-six miles northwest of Ogden, Utah, the last rails were laid and the last spike was driven, completing the Pacific Railway for quick traffic between the East and the West.
Two distinct books might be written upon the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad from the Missouri River, and of the Central Pacific Railroad from the Sacramento River-those iron trails that lengthened westward and eastward until they crossed the vacant space of 1770 miles and joined in the Utah desert.
The one book should focus upon the actual building operations in the great open of plains, mountains and deserts; the other, upon the financial operations by the CrMobilier of the Union Pacific, and by Crocker & Co. and the Finance Company of the Central Pacific.
The pages which here follow aim at providing the first-mentioned story. They are devoted mainly to the stress, the sweat, the toil by mind and body in order to achieve the physical problems. Deeds and romance aplenty may be found, without resort to those disputed details that once made great names common property and are now relatively unimportant. That past is dead; an undying path brightens in the swath of Time.
The writer of the present book wishes to tell only how the Pacific Railway, the wonder of its age and of any age, came into being; how Lincoln, Judah, Huntington, Stanford, Crocker, the Arneses, Durant, Dillon, Dodge, General Sherman, the two doughty Casements, the surveyors, the train crews, the laborers -Americans, Irishmen, Chinamen, Mormon settlers- all generously backed it, a young giant, in its relay race through half a continent, to the goal attained within six years instead of the allotted fourteen.
The performance was typically American-the eighth wonder of the world, and unsurpassed to this day. Heroes attended upon the march of the rails. Some died in line of duty; as far as the writer knows, every department official, save one, of construction times, is dead. The Ames monument, so long lonely and near forgotten upon the Sherman Summit of the Wyoming Black Hills, and the neglected pedestal of triumph at distant Promontory, are punctuations in pages of historic endeavor by a host named and unnamed.
The work itself, however, is not all forgotten. It was completed at the close of one great war, and was commemorated at the close of another. On May 1o, 1919, there gathered at Ogden of Utah a remarkable concourse, representing the breadth and growth of the United States, who celebrated the semi-centennial of the driving of the Golden Spike. More remarkable, a thousand names were enrolled of men and women who, some of them as children, assisted in laying those rails that " banded the continent and wedded the oceans."
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