Young sent a telegram to Reed (then at the UP’s end of track in Wyoming) asking him to send “at your earliest convenience” such additional supplies “as your judgment may deem necessary for putting a large force of hands at work at once, for I am anxious to complete the work in time, and the days are passing.”14 They were burning daylight, wasting time, and he wanted to get going.
On May 31, from Weber Canyon, Reed sent a telegram to Durant demanding “tools for five thousand men from Salt Lake Valley, men ready to commence work as soon as tools are received.”15 A week later, the first group of westbound Mormon converts from Liverpool came to New York and got on the train; they arrived in Wyoming before June was out. By then another group was en route, with yet another to follow. The total emigration from Europe for Salt Lake City in 1868 was 3,232, mainly from Great Britain, and nearly all ready to go to work.16
YOUNG had his critics, although few lived in Utah. In the East, they charged that Young was favoring his sons and closest associates as subcontractors, that he was getting a tithe from every laborer, supposedly for the Mormon church but, as one editor of a newspaper knew, that was “just another name for Brigham Young,” who was otherwise enriching himself. The Cincinnati Commercial charged that, whereas Young’s contract called for 30 cents per yard for work done, he gave only 27 cents to his subcontractors “and the Prophet [Young] pockets the odd million.” The Cheyenne Daily Leader on June 15, 1868, charged that the contract between Young and the UP was “outright slavery.” It claimed that Young called for manpower from each Mormon settlement according to its population, and the draftees had to work at wages set by Young. Further, the Leader believed the UP had denied work to Wyoming residents because it was “the settled policy of the railroad company to give large contracts to Brigham.”17
That was not true. Although at the time there was a widely held impression that Young would undertake all the grading in Utah for the UP, actually the contract for the work for fifty miles east of Echo Canyon, in the direction of Wyoming, was held by Joseph Nounan and Company, a Gentile firm. With Nounan as with Young, there were misunderstandings and miscalculations in the contract, and a good deal of acrimony resulted between the contractors and the railroads. This was usually the case in the construction of railroads at the time.18
Young had three of his sons—Joseph, Brigham, Jr., and John W.—and Bishop John Sharp hiring and directing the men. Sharp, close to Young, was also his lawyer, and would remain a major Utah railroad leader for decades. Together Joseph Young and Sharp became associated in a firm known as Sharp & Young that took on grading contracts and the boring of several tunnels. The partners soon had fourteen hundred men working for them in Echo Canyon, and working well. Young said they improved rapidly because “they have got used to the labor.”19
In early June, Young was the principal speaker at a mass meeting in the new Tabernacle in Salt Lake City. He said he had always wanted the railroad and that the Mormons would help to build it. One of his followers wrote, “We felt much better after he did that; we feared he might not be willing and we’d never have a road.” Young also said he expected the line to run through the city, for which the Cheyenne Daily Leader jumped on him. The newspaper pointed out that the line north of the city would be sixty or seventy miles shorter, but it admitted that Young would probably have his way, because “there is more political strength and influence united in him than in any other one person in America.”20
Well, perhaps, sometimes, in some places, but not always even in Utah. Early that summer, Dodge came to Salt Lake City. Young knew the UP’s workings well enough to know that, though Durant had considerable power, and Reed had power, and there were other men who had to be dealt with, in the end it was Dodge who got what he wanted. Clearly, wherever Dodge sat was the head of the table. He was a man of such strong personality that even such men as Durant gave way—and even such men as Young.
On this occasion, Dodge had come to tell Young that the UP was going to go around the north end of the lake and would run not through Salt Lake City but, rather, through Ogden. Though Young put what Dodge called great pressure on him to go south instead of north, Dodge held firm. His own surveys and those of others had convinced him that north was the best way to go.
Young would not quit, not yet. According to Dodge, “He even went so far as to deliver in the Tabernacle a great sermon denouncing me, and stating a road could not be built or run without the aid of the Mormons.”21 Young then approached the CP to accept the southern route, but to no avail, for their surveyors had come to the same conclusion as Dodge.
Dodge stood firm. He told Young that the Mormons would have to build their own spur line to Ogden if they wanted rail service in Salt Lake City. Young finally, unwillingly, but as gracefully as he could, accepted the decision. A few weeks later, in another Tabernacle sermon, Young said that wherever the railroad went around Salt Lake, “it is all right because God rules and He will have things as He pleases. We can act, but He will over-rule.”22
At the beginning of June, the Mormons were at work. The Deseret News exclaimed, “We live in a wonderful age.” Admittedly, the railroad would bring in Gentiles, but it would also carry them out.23 Dodge took one look and from then on he couldn’t have enough Mormons working for the UP. They were, he said, teetotalers to the last man, tolerated no gambling, were quiet and law-abiding, said grace devoutly at meals, and concluded each day’s labor with communal prayers and songs.
One of their songs, a favorite of Dodge’s, written by James Crane, a Mormon railroad grader, ran:
At the head of great Echo
The railway’s begun
The Mormons are cutting
And grading like fun.
They say they’ll stick to it
Till it is complete,
When friends and relations
They’re longing to meet.24
By June 9, they had broken ground for the masonry and grade at Devil’s Gate in Weber Canyon. John Sharp could put only eighty men to work there. He could set no more at the job because the defile in which the men worked was so narrow it couldn’t hold any more. Once he was clear of Devil’s Gate, he used as many as five hundred men on a single job. Through the canyon, Mormon gangs worked as hard and as faithfully as did the Chinese for the CP. They cut timber for bridges and ties, or made grade, or built bridges, or dug tunnels, and more.
The July 22, 1868, Deseret News said, “A birds-eye view of the railroad camps in Echo Canyon would disclose to the beholder a little world of concerted industry unparalleled.” Historian Clarence Reeder, in his dissertation on Utah railroads, summarized the Mormon construction efforts: “A people working together in harmony under the guidance of their religious leaders to accomplish a temporal task which they treated as though it were divinely inspired.”25
Samuel Schill was a twelve-year-old that summer. His dad was a teamster hauling supplies for the UP. In June, when the Weber River was high and running very fast, someone asked young Sam if he could swim. Sure, was the answer. Well, then, swim the river, and while you are at it carry over this rope to the engineering party on the other side. The engineers need it to start establishing a ferry here.
Sam did it, for 50 cents. That was the first money he had ever earned. He earned more working for the railroad, by hauling ties cut by his dad down to the roadbed.
At night, he later recalled, he would sit around the campfire with the grown-ups, singing such songs as:
Hurrah, hurrah, the railroad’s begun.
Three cheers for the contractor, his name Brigham Young.
Hurrah, hurrah, we are faithful and true
And if we stick to it, it’s bound to go through.26
HOW good were these Mormons in a job that began with daylight and lasted until dusk, or sometimes went through the night? The authoritative voice is that of Hubert Howe Bancroft in his 1890 history of Utah: “It was acknowledged by all railroad men that nowhere on the line could the grading compare in completeness and fi
nish with the work done by the people of Utah.”27
In addition to grades and bridges, the Mormons and other UP workers had to drive tunnels. All together the UP had four tunnels. One was in Wyoming, at Mary’s Creek, in the Rattlesnake Hills, a short one of 215 feet, and straight. It was driven through brown sandstone that had to be timbered. The second tunnel was at the head of Echo Canyon. At 772 feet, it was the longest on the line, with long cuts leading to it. The tunnel was driven through weak clay rock that required it to be lined with timber. Work started in July 1868, but it was not finished until May 1869. The railroad ran a temporary track eight miles in length around it. Tunnels 3 and 4 were in Echo Canyon, three-quarters of a mile apart, some twenty-five miles from Ogden. Tunnel 3, on a curve, was 508 feet long, driven through a sharp spur of black limestone and dark-blue quartzite. Begun in September 1868, it was completed in April 1869. Tunnel 4, also on a curve, was 297 feet long, and it was completed by January 1869. In all of these tunnels, the UP gangs used nitroglycerin. No one protested. It was obvious to everyone working on the railroad that the need for speed was paramount, if the race was to be won.
The several crossings of the Weber River were made with trestles. These were temporary structures. In the judgment of historian John Debo Galloway, in his book The First Transcontinental Railroad—published in 1950 and still a definitive work—“The use of the temporary structures on the rapid advance westward was fully justified by the desire to get the road into operation, since the bridges serve the purpose for which they were erected. Permanent stone and masonry work could be added later. The procedure that was followed by the Union Pacific in its original construction was entirely proper for a railroad building into a new territory.”28
THE CP watched, worried, and acted. In mid-1868, the CP’s end of track was more than five hundred miles west of Echo Summit, but it was there that Stanford and the other members of the Big Four wanted to go. They were determined to begin the Utah grading at once, and in the process to use the best workforce they could possibly get, the Mormons. So, in the first week in June, Stanford set out by rail and stage for Salt Lake City. But Seymour and Reed had beat him there, and Reed had Brigham Young’s friendship, and a contract with him. Young told Stanford he had all he could do at present to complete the work he had taken on for the UP. After that was done, he intended to make new contracts with Reed, which would take the UP one or two hundred miles west of Salt Lake City.29
Stanford went into action. At first he found Young to be “cold and close,” but he managed to break down the defenses. Young wanted a railroad to come through his city, but Stanford “found good reasons why they [the Mormons] would be most benefitted by the northern route.” He told Hopkins to “tell Charley [Crocker] to double his energy, and do what is necessary to secure what labor is required to push the road to its utmost. Anything less will end in defeat.” Shaken by the experience of dealing with Young, Stanford confessed to Hopkins, “It has been pretty difficult navigating here, and it requires care now to avoid getting into breakers, which are devilish close, but I think I see the way out.”30
When Stanford asked Young what he would want for his workers, Young replied that the supplies he required were “flour, beef, bacon, beans, dried fruit, molasses, sugar, small quantities of rice and hospital supplies, tents or lumber for quarters, short-handled shovels, assorted picks, medium and breaking plows, scrapers, wheel-barrows and plank, carts and harness.”31 To Stanford that sounded reasonable, a lot more reasonable than the food the CP had to provide the Chinese.
Stanford wanted Young to agree to a contract for grading west of the mouth of the Weber River, but the Mormon leader wouldn’t do it. Finally, Young agreed, or at least seemed to agree, to send workers all the way to Humboldt Wells to do grading toward the east. Stanford in any case was more interested in the area just north of Salt Lake City. On July 28, he sent a telegram to Young: “We want to let you a contract for grading two hundred miles west from Weber Canyon. Would you prefer contract to proposition I made?”
Young wired back the next day that when his work for the UP was done he was ready to make a contract “upon the proposition you made, but some one must be sent here [Stanford had returned to California] authorized to contract, and the work must be ready and kept ready, that hands may not be hindered from time work begins.”32
Like Dodge, Reed, and others, Stanford was learning what a shrewd, practical businessman Young was. On August 10, Young told Stanford by telegram that the CP’s delays and problems with the UP had “caused such a scattering of our surplus laborers that I am unable to make a contract. Soon after you were here great numbers were inquiring for work west, but the delays have been such that they are now out of reach. I am unable to give any encouragement at present.”33
Young did try. On September 5, he sent a telegraph to “all the Bishops south of this City,” in which he asked them “to send me all the help you possibly can, as quick as possible, to work on the railroad. We wish to rush it through to Monument Point. . . . The pay will be sure, and in money at liberal rates.”34
THE contract with the CP was not made that summer, or even in the early fall. Durant had meanwhile sent some of his toughest Irish graders all the way out to Humboldt Wells to begin grading west. “Durant was going to the Pacific Ocean, I believe,” Huntington later said. “He started for there, at any rate.”35 But in November, Stanford, by then back in Salt Lake City, met Durant, who was also there to put pressure on Young. “We had general talk in the main,” Stanford told Hopkins. On November 9, 1868, however, Stanford finally managed to get Young to agree to a contract calling on the Mormons to build from Ogden west to Monument Point, north of Salt Lake.
The subcontractor was the Mormon company of Benson, Farr & West. Brigham Young had a quarter-interest in the firm. The company had already built a hundred miles west from Monument Point. The partners were bishops in the Mormon church and at the top of Mormon society: Ezra Taft Benson was a member of Young’s original Council of Twelve (and great-grandfather of a future secretary of agriculture); Lorin Farr was mayor of Ogden; Chauncey West was a Mormon bishop.
Another Mormon bishop, John Sharp of Sharp & Young, at that moment grading west for the UP, was practically alongside the Benson, Farr & West workers. Durant told Stanford, “If we hired his men, he could play the same game.”36 A bidding war began, as each side tried to hire laborers away from the other. This drove the wages up drastically, but the competitors kept at it.
Threats and counterthreats, bluffs and actions aside, Benson, Farr & West were making progress on the CP roadbed between Ogden and Monument. So were the UP workers. The two railroads were now grading within a stone’s throw of each other for much of the long distance between the mouth of Weber Canyon and Humboldt Wells. The graders were even working at night, in the desert country north of the Salt Lake, by the light of big bonfires of sagebrush. It was madness, but it was done, and continued to be done.
Beginning November 1, Stanford made his headquarters in Salt Lake City. Among other objectives, he wanted to spy on the UP. He had Lewis Clement with him; Acting Chief Engineer Montague had put Clement in charge in Utah, along with Consulting Engineer George Gray. The three men went out to inspect the preliminary line run by Butler Ives in 1867. They agreed that the line required an eight-hundred-foot tunnel through solid limestone that would cost $75,000 to blast and would delay track laying in the home stretch of the race. A new line laid out at the expense of alignment in order to avoid the tunnel would require a fill of ten thousand yards of earth, with rock cuts leading up to it that would consume more than fifteen hundred kegs of black powder. Stanford ordered it done anyway.
Stanford also wanted to convince his Mormon contractors to start grading toward Monument Point as soon as they completed the hundred miles to the west of that place that they had contracted to do. They expected to be finished in about a month. Stanford wanted them to start the new grading in Ogden, working west toward Monument Point. His thought, ap
parently, was to establish Ogden as the meeting point for the two railroads. Congress had not yet set the place, and others, including his own partners plus Durant and the other big shots from the UP, had other plans.
By the next month, December 1868, the CP was in apparent control of a line from Monument Point to Ogden. It had finished about two-thirds of its grading, although blasting and filling at Promontory went slowly. The contractors, Benson, Farr & West, gave many excuses, but Stanford “started Brigham after them,” and they began to work faster.37
One of the Big Four who had other plans was Huntington, who was obstinately in favor of the CP’s going as far east as Echo Summit and meeting the UP there (the UP had graded from the summit west through most of Echo Canyon, thanks to the Mormons, but its track was still in Wyoming in 1868). Stanford saw nothing to be gained by parallel grading in Echo Canyon, but still he wished all the bad luck in the world on the UP. “One good storm,” he wrote Hopkins on December 10, “would settle the question of their coming through the Weber Canyon this winter.”38
THE use of codes and of code-breaking goes back to the beginning of writing. It was usually used by governments to hide what they were doing. President Thomas Jefferson had a code system used by Captain Meriwether Lewis to report on the political views of other army officers, and another for Lewis to use while exploring the Louisiana Purchase and the Northwest, in order to fool the Spanish should they happen to intercept Lewis’s messages. Sometimes Civil War generals used codes, although, it must be said, not often enough (George B. McClellan’s uncoded orders were captured by the Confederates before the Battle of Antietam, giving Robert E. Lee a chance to read them).