6. Howard, Great Iron Trail, p. 107.
7. Theodore Judah, Report to the Pacific Railroad Convention, published by Sacramento Daily Union, July 25, 1860, in Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley, p. 62.
8. Grenville M. Dodge, How We Built the Union Pacific Railway and Other Railway Papers and Addresses. (Council Bluffs, Iowa: Monarch Printing Co., n.d.), p. 10.
9. Wheat, “Life of Judah,” p. 238.
10. Lewis, Big Four, p. 18.
11. “Mrs. Judah’s Letter [to Bancroft], 12/14/89,” Bancroft Library.
12. Judah, Report to the Convention.
13. “Mrs. Judah’s Letter,” Bancroft Library.
14. Ibid.
15. David Lavender, The Great Persuader, p. 87.
16. “Mrs. Judah’s Letter,” Bancroft Library.
17. Wheat, “Life of Judah,” p. 242.
18. Ibid., pp. 243–44.
19. Ibid., p. 245.
20. “Mrs. Judah’s Letter,” Bancroft Library.
21. Charles Crocker Memoir, Bancroft Library.
22. “Mrs. Judah’s Letter,” Bancroft Library.
23. Lewis, Big Four, p. 25.
24. “Mrs. Judah’s Letter,” Bancroft Library.
25. Wheat, “Life of Judah,” pp. 245–46.
26. Crocker Memoir, Bancroft Library.
27. Wheat, “Life of Judah,” p. 247.
28. Quoted in George Kraus, High Road to Promontory, p. 33.
29. Quoted in ibid., p. 33.
30. Sacramento Union, Aug. 7, 1861.
31. Kraus, High Road to Promontory, p. 38.
32. Report of the Chief Engineer of Central Pacific Railroad Company, Oct. 1, 1861, Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley.
33. Wheat, “Life of Judah,” p. 251.
34. Ibid.; John Debo Galloway, The First Transcontinental Railroad, p. 61.
35. Robert Russell, Improvement of Communication with the Pacific Coast as an Issue in American Politics (Cedar Rapids, Iowa: Torch Press, 1948), p. 294.
36. Wheat, “Life of Judah,” p. 251.
37. Ibid., p. 252.
38. Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 14.
39. Kraus, High Road to Promontory, p. 38.
40. Lavender, Great Persuader, p. 105.
41. Ibid.
42. Wheat, “Life of Judah,” p. 254.
43. Quoted in Russell, Improvement of Communication, p. 296.
44. Dodge, How We Built, p. 10.
45. Lavender, Great Persuader, p. 108.
46. Russell, Improvement of Communication, p. 296.
47. Sacramento Union, June 18, 1862.
48. Kraus, High Road to Promontory, pp. 47–48.
49. Wheat, “Life of Judah,” p. 256.
50. Henry V. Poor, “The Pacific Railroad,” North American Review, vol. 128 (June 1879), p. 665.
CHAPTER FOUR: THE BIRTH OF THE UNION PACIFIC
1. John Hoyt Williams, A Great and Shining Road, p. 50.
2. J. R. Perkins, Trails, Rails and War, p. 86.
3. Ibid., p. 123.
4. Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs, 2 vols. (New York: Charles L. Webster, 1885–86), vol. 2, chap. 2, p. 31.
5. Quoted in ibid., p. 89.
6. Perkins, Trails, Rails and War, p. 92.
7. Ibid., p. 91.
8. Ibid., pp. 95–96.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid., pp. 100, 104.
11. Grenville M. Dodge, How We Built the Union Pacific Railway, pp. 10–12; John W. Starr, Lincoln and the Railroads (New York: Arno Press, 1981, reprint of 1927 ed.), pp. 201–5. Wallace Farnham, “Grenville Dodge and the Union Pacific: A Study of Historical Legends,” Journal of American History, vol. 51 (June 1964), p. 636, calls this story “absurd.” It doesn’t seem so to me, or to Alan Nevins, or to other historians.
12. Perkins, Trails, Rails and War, p. 133.
13. Maury Klein, Union Pacific, vol. 1, Birth of a Railroad, 1862–1893 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1987), p. 24.
14. Ibid., p. 23.
15. Ibid., p. 24.
16. Ibid., p. 25.
17. Williams, Great and Shining Road, pp. 72–73.
18. Ibid., p. 74.
19. Ibid., p. 70.
20. Starr, Lincoln and the Railroads, p. 204.
21. Ibid., pp. 26–27.
22. Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 76.
23. Klein, Birth of a Railroad, p. 29.
24. Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 80.
25. Ibid., p. 84.
26. Thomas C. Cochran, Railroad Leaders 1845–1890: The Business Mind in Action, (New York: Russell and Russell, 1965), p. 99.
27. Quoted in Robert G. Athearn, Union Pacific Country (Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1971), p. 345.
28. Starr, Lincoln and the Railroads, p. 208.
29. Perkins, Trails, Rails and War, p. 132.
30. Klein, Birth of a Railroad, p. 29.
31. Ibid., p. 30.
32. Ibid., p. 31.
33. Ibid., p. 32.
34. Ibid., p. 33.
35. Perkins, Trails, Rails and War, pp. 91–92.
36. Ibid., p. 151.
37. Ibid., p. 152.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid., pp. 153–54.
40. Ibid., p. 142.
41. Starr, Lincoln and the Railroads, p. 214.
42. Klein, Birth of a Railroad, p. 39.
43. Alfred D. Chandler, Strategy and Structure: Chapters in History of the Industrial Enterprise. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1962), pp. 21–22.
44. Ibid., p. 23.
CHAPTER FIVE: JUDAH AND THE ELEPHANT
1. George Kraus, High Road to Promontory, p. 52.
2. Sacramento Union, July 12, 1862.
3. John Hoyt Williams, A Great and Shining Road, p. 56. Judah’s report, dated Sept. 1, 1862, is in Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley.
4. David Lavender, The Great Persuader, p. 129.
5. Ibid., pp. 130–31; Williams, Great and Shining Road, pp. 58–59.
6. Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 60.
7. Sacramento Union, Aug. 22, 1864.
8. Judah’s report of Oct. 22, 1862, is in the Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley.
9. Charles Crocker interview, Bancroft Library, Berkeley.
10. Robert Utley and Francis Ketterson, Jr., Golden Spike (Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, 1969), p. 15. Southern Pacific historian Lynn Farrar in an Aug. 22, 1999, letter to S. E. Ambrose, comments, “Riegel is dreaming. No books of Crocker & Co. were ever produced for anyone to disentangle. Mark Hopkins saw to that. They disappeared.”
11. Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 61.
12. Crocker interview, Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley.
13. Sacramento Union, Jan. 9, 1863, in Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley.
14. Crocker interview, Bancroft Library.
15. Wesley S. Griswold, A Work of Giants, pp. 22–23.
16. John W. Starr, Lincoln and the Railroads, pp. 214–15. Starr is the only one who points out that Sargent was no longer in Congress; all the other authorities on the CP list him as either a representative or a senator at this time.
17. Carl Wheat, “A Sketch of the Life of Theodore D. Judah,” p. 262.
18. “Mrs. Judah’s Letter [to Bancroft], 12/14/89,” Bancroft Library.
19. Sacramento Union, April 29, 1863.
20. Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 65; Bruce Clement Cooper, Lewis Metzler Clement: A Pioneer of the Central Pacific Railroad (privately printed, 1991), p. 5.
21. Quoted in Lavender, Great Persuader, p. 137.
22. Judah’s 1862 report is in the Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley; see also Wheat, “Life of Judah,” p. 259.
23. Wheat, “Life of Judah,” p. 35.
24. Kraus, High Road to Promontory, p. 55.
25. Huntington to E. B. Crocker, May 13, 1868, Huntington Papers, Library of Congress.
26. Ibid.
27. Lavender, Great Persuader, p. 139.
28. Williams, Great a
nd Shining Road, p. 67.
29. Lavender, Great Persuader, p. 140; Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 67.
30. Lavender, Great Persuader, p. 141.
31. “Mrs. Judah’s Letter,” Bancroft Library.
32. Wheat, “Life of Judah,” p. 262.
33. Ibid.; Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 68.
34. Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 39.
35. Sacramento Union, Oct. 27, 1863.
36. This was the eleventh locomotive to arrive in California. It had been shipped on the Herald of the Morning in May 1863 and arrived on Sept. 20. (Wendell Huffman, “Railroads Shipped by Sea,” Railroad History, Spring 1999, p. 27.)
37. Sacramento Union, Nov. 11, 1863.
38. Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 41.
39. Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 90.
40. Lynn Farrar to Stephen Ambrose, Aug. 22, 1999.
41. Sacramento Union, Feb. 18, 1864.
42. Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 91.
43. Crocker interview, Bancroft Library.
44. Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 92.
45. Crocker interview, Bancroft Library.
46. Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 88.
47. Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 83.
48. Kraus, High Road to Promontory, p. 82.
49. Ibid., p. 87.
50. Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 87.
51. Ibid., p. 92.
52. Crocker interview, Bancroft Library.
53. Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 93.
54. “Mrs. Judah’s Letter,” Bancroft Library.
CHAPTER SIX: LAYING OUT THE UNION PACIFIC LINE
1. Young to Durant, Oct. 23, 1863, and Jan. 26, 1864, Brigham Young Papers, Archives, Church of Latter-Day Saints Library, Salt Lake City.
2. Dey to Reed, April 25, 1864, Samuel Reed Papers, UP Archives, Omaha.
3. Maury Klein, Birth of a Railroad, pp. 52–53.
4. Ibid., p. 54.
5. Ibid., p. 55.
6. John Hoyt Williams, A Great and Shining Road, p. 103.
7. Quoted in ibid., p. 104.
8. Henry Morton Stanley, Autobiography (Boston, 1909), p. 226.
9. J. R. Perkins, Trails, Rails and War, pp. 172–72.
10. Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 106.
11. Ibid., p. 174.
12. William T. Sherman, Memoirs, vol. 2, pp. 411–12; see also Robert Athearn, “General Sherman and the Western Railroads,” Pacific Historical Review, vol. 5, page 39.
13. Perkins, Trails, Rails and War, p. 176.
14. Wesley S. Griswold, A Work of Giants, p. 130.
15. Robert G. Athearn, Union Pacific Country, p. 36.
16. Chicago Tribune, Aug. 14, 1865.
17. Klein, Birth of a Railroad, p. 63.
18. Harper’s Weekly, July 22, 1865, p. 450.
19. The original of the Arthur Ferguson Journal is in the Utah State Historical Society, Salt Lake City; I worked from a typewritten copy.
20. Grenville M. Dodge, How We Built the Union Pacific Railway, pp. 20–21. Professor Wallace Farnham, in his article “Grenville Dodge” in the Journal of American History, pp. 638–40, calls this story “fanciful” and implies that Dodge not only saw no Indians but was never at the pass. For my part, the story rings true; besides, there were plenty of other eyewitnesses.
21. Klein, Birth of a Railroad, p. 67.
22. Omaha Weekly Herald, Oct. 27, 1865.
23. Oscar O. Winther, The Transportation Frontier: Trans-Mississippi West 1865–1890 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964), p. 8.
24. Klein, Birth of a Railroad, p. 66.
25. Ibid., p. 67.
26. Ibid., pp. 69–70.
27. Ibid., p. 71.
28. James Maxwell Memoir, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Del.; H. K. Nichols Diary, March 11, 1867.
29. Arthur Ferguson Journal, Utah State Historical Society.
30. Reed to Durant, Nov. 1, 1865, Samuel Reed Papers, with thanks to Don Snoddy.
31. Denver Rocky Mountain News, May 25, 1866.
32. Quoted in Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 110.
CHAPTER SEVEN: THE CENTRAL PACIFIC ATTACKS THE SIERRA NEVADA
1. John Logan Allen, North American Exploration: A Continent Comprehended, 3 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), vol. 3, pp. 488–92. King began his survey in 1867, just as the Central Pacific was making its way through the mountains.
2. Clarence King, Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1970 reprint), pp. 6–8. King went on to describe the desert that lay east of the mountains, a passage that will be excerpted when I describe how the Central Pacific graders and track layers came to it.
3. Charles Crocker interview, Bancroft Library.
4. Sacramento Union, Jan. 7, 1865.
5. John R. Signor, Donner Pass: Southern Pacific’s Sierra Crossing (San Marino, Calif.: Golden West Books, 1985), p. 19.
6. Quoted in John J. Stewart, The Iron Trail to the Golden Spike (New York: Meadow Lark Press, 1994), p. 121.
7. Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley.
8. Hopkins to Huntington, Collis Huntington Papers, ser. 1, Incoming Correspondence, reel 1.
9. Thomas W. Chinn, ed., A History of the Chinese in California: A Syllabus (San Francisco: Chinese Historical Society of America, 1969), intro.
10. Quoted in John Hoyt Williams, A Great and Shining Road, p. 96.
11. Elliott West, “Unheard Voices: Digging Deeper into Western History,” paper read before the Western History Conference, Denver, Colo., 1997.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Judge Samuel Yee oral history, April 19, 1975, by Antoria Chu and Heng Kok Lee; Rudy Kim interview by Jeffery Paul Chan, both in Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley.
15. “The Chinese in California,” Lippincott’s Magazine, March 1868, pp. 36–40.
16. Quoted in Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 97.
17. Ibid., pp. 97–98.
18. Lee Chew, “A Chinese Immigrant Makes His Home in America,” Independent magazine, reprinted on www.historymatters.gmu.edu/text/1650a-chew.html.
19. George Kraus, “Chinese Laborers and the Construction of the Central Pacific,” Utah Historical Quarterly, vol. 37, no. 1 (Winter 1969), p. 51.
20. Hopkins to Huntington, May 31, 1865, Huntington Papers, ser. 1, reel 1.
21. Quoted in George Kraus, High Road to Promontory, p. 110.
22. Wesley S. Griswold, A Work of Giants, p. 117.
23. Quoted in Sacramento Union, June 16, 1865.
24. Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 100.
25. Quoted in Bruce Clement Cooper, Lewis Metzler Clement, p. 7.
26. Robert West Howard, The Great Iron Trail, pp. 229–30; Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 123; Stewart, Iron Trail, p. 129.
27. Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 113.
28. Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 211.
29. Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 115.
30. Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 145.
31. Sacramento Union, Aug. 3, 1865; Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 121; Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 102.
32. Quoted in Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 123.
33. Ibid., p. 124.
34. Williams, Great and Shining Road, pp. 116–17.
35. Stewart, Iron Trail, p. 130.
36. Railroad Record, Nov. 23, 1865.
37. Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 98.
38. Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 120.
39. A. W. Loomis, “How Our Chinamen Are Employed,” Overland Monthly, March 1869, quoted in Griswold, p. 121.
40. Quoted in Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 98.
41. Quoted in Kraus, High Road to Promontory, pp. 116, 120.
42. Lewis Clement, “Statement Concerning Charles Crocker,” Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley.
43. J. O. Wilder, “The Way Pioneer Builders Met Difficulties,” Southern Pacific Bul
letin, vol. 9, no. 11 (Nov. 1920), p. 23.
44. Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 144.
45. Southern Pacific Bulletin, vol. 5, no. 21 (Nov. 1917).
46. Griswold, Work of Giants, p. 151.
47. Ibid., p. 125.
CHAPTER EIGHT: THE UNION PACIFIC ACROSS NEBRASKA
1. Robert Athearn, Union Pacific Country, p. 39.
2. Samuel Bowles, Across the Continent: A Summer’s Journey to the Rocky Mountains (Springfield, Mass.: S. Bowles, 1866), p. 19.
3. Quoted in Athearn, Union Pacific Country, pp. 42–43.
4. Quoted in Union Pacific Railroad, The Union Pacific Railroad Across the Continent West from Omaha, Nebraska (pamphlet published by the company, 1868), p. 15.
5. Omaha Weekly Herald, Jan. 12 and 19, 1865.
6. Ibid., March 23, 1865.
7. Magee Diary, quoted in the study done for C. B. DeMille for his movie Union Pacific and given to me by Don Snoddy.
8. Quoted in Maury Klein, Birth of a Railroad, p. 72.
9. Ibid.; Grenville M. Dodge, How We Built the Union Pacific Railway, p. 13.
10. Quoted in Klein, Birth of a Railroad, p. 73.
11. Grenville Dodge, A Paper on the Trans-Continental Railways (Omaha, Neb.: Union Pacific Railroad, 1891), p. 21.
12. Quoted in John Hoyt Williams, A Great and Shining Road, p. 105.
13. Ibid., pp. 73–74.
14. Quoted in Robert Athearn, “General Sherman and the Western Railroads,” p. 41.
15. Quoted in UP, Union Pacific Railroad, pp. 15–17.
16. All these and many other Reed-to-Durant telegrams are in the UP Archives; I used typed copies prepared by Don Snoddy.
17. Klein, Birth of a Railroad, p. 74.
18. New York Times, Aug. 22, 1866.
19. DeMille collection, p. 16.
20. Quoted in Williams, Great and Shining Road, p. 125.
21. Ibid.
22. Quotations on the workers’ daily routine in Williams, p. 125.
23. UP, Union Pacific Railroad; Cincinnati Gazette, June 1867, various articles; DeMille collection, passim.
24. John J. Stewart, The Iron Trail to the Golden Spike, pp. 152–53.
25. Henry M. Stanley, My Early Travels and Adventures in America and Asia (New York: Scribner, 1895), vol. 1, pp. 195–96.
26. Cincinnati Gazette, June 14, 1887.
27. Quoted in Oscar O. Winther, The Transportation Frontier, p. 111.
28. Omaha Weekly Herald, May 11, 1866.
29. Ibid., Aug. 2, 1866.
30. Reed telegrams in UP Archives, Omaha, courtesy of Don Snoddy.
31. Omaha Weekly Herald, Sept. 7, 1866.
32. Ibid., Sept. 21, 1866.