JUDAH spoke of the Central Pacific as “my railroad,” but it wasn’t, any more than the railroads back east he had built, or the Sacramento Valley Railroad, were his. He had thought of it, dreamed of it, laid out the line for it, gone to Washington to convince the Congress and the President to get behind it. He had invited in the men who financed it. But it wasn’t his.
With the onset of winter in 1862–63, the men whose railroad it was went to work. The Big Four wanted to make big money, just like Doc Durant, George Francis Train, and their cohorts. Big money meant the same as with the UP, milking the construction. So Charlie Crocker drew up a contract awarding the Charles Crocker Contract and Finance Company and several minor companies the right to build the first stretch of the road. That would be Sections 1 to 18, from Sacramento to today’s Roseville. This was later amended, but its essence remained.
It was an almost identical device to the Crédit Mobilier. The Big Four awarded to Charles Crocker & Company the contract for building the road as well as for supplying all materials, equipment, rolling stock, and buildings. Even better than the Crédit Mobilier, according to railroad historian Robert E. Riegel, was the ability of Crocker & Company “to get its accounts into such shape that no one has ever been quite able to disentangle them.”10
All the Big Four were involved in Crocker’s company, but not Judah. Huntington was in New York, which became his permanent home as he raised money and bought needed equipment and supplies, leaving Hopkins with his power of attorney. Judah and Bailey protested, and Judah said at a board meeting of the CP that he openly doubted Crocker’s ability to do the work. But two days after Christmas, the board awarded Crocker & Company the contract. Two days after that, Crocker resigned from the CP board (keeping his stock) to avoid charges of conflict of interest.I His contract named him the general superintendent and called for paying him $400,000 for the first eighteen miles of track, with $250,000 in cash, $100,000 in CP bonds, and $50,000 in stock.
This was almost too much for Judah. He felt “his” railroad was being stolen from him. He suspected, correctly, that all the Big Four were owners of the construction company. He feared they might bankrupt the CP to profit from its building. He wondered why the CP’s treasury was either low or bare while there was always plenty of money for the wagon road out of Dutch Flat, in which he had no interest.11
Judah had a right to complain and he used it often, but, then, the Big Four were also putting in their time and reputation, plus their money. In an interview years later, Crocker pointed out, “We actually spent our own money building that road up to Newcastle [beyond Roseville] and it left every one of us in debt.”12 (Crocker sold his store for the money.) Stanford was trying to get funds from cities—Sacramento and San Francisco especially—and counties and the legislature. Huntington was selling stocks and bonds in the East. But except for loans from the Ames brothers and a few others, the Big Four were operating on their own.
But operate they did. On January 8, 1863, the company had its groundbreaking event. Governor Stanford was there, and Crocker—but Huntington was in New York, Hopkins declined, and Judah was in the Sierra Nevada. Though it rained and was otherwise miserable, there was a large crowd representing every section of the state, high officials, preachers to bless the work, and many ladies. The Sacramento Union called attention to the stands, with the national flag adorning each end, a brass band playing “Wait for the Wagon,” and a large banner bearing a representation of hands clasped across the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific, with “the prayer of every loyal heart, ‘May the Bond Be Eternal,’ ” printed on it.
Crocker introduced Stanford. The governor gave a long and dull speech, including this pledge: “There will be no delay, no backing, no uncertainty in the continued progress.” After he was done and a prayer made, Stanford took up a shovel and turned the first earth for the road. Then Crocker turned a spadeful and made a short speech. He promised, “All that I have—all of my own strength, intellect and energy—are devoted to the building [of this road].”
The rhythmic “thud, thud,” of the CP’s steam pile driver—its only modern technology—could be heard working on the banks of the American River. The little ten-horsepower driver was lifting a nineteen-hundred-pound hammer three times a minute and placing thirty-foot pilings into the riverbed at the rate of seven a day. Crocker picked up on the sound and told the audience, “The work is going right on, gentlemen, I assure you.”13
After four decades of agitation, promotion, boosters, politics, demands, concerns, embarrassments, alarm, consternation, delays, and more, the first transcontinental railroad was under way. As the Sacramento Union put it, “Everybody felt happy because, after so many years of dreaming, scheming, talking and toiling, they saw with their own eyes the actual commencement of a Pacific Railroad.”
NOT until February did the ground dry out sufficiently for Crocker to get to work making a grade for the road. The only other work actually under way was the construction of the bridge over the American River at Sacramento. Getting laborers was devilishly difficult. “Most of the men working on the road were merely working for a stake,” Stanford recalled. “When they got that, they would go off to the mines, and we could not hold them, except in rare instances, more than a very little while.” Small wonder in California, where their base pay was less than $3 a day. The Union announced that there were two hundred men at work on the grading, but the work they did was widely separated, and as the diggings went upriver and thus got closer to the gold and silver deposits more men walked off the job.
Crocker decided to take charge himself. He would learn railroad construction by doing it. He later said, “If it becomes necessary to jump off the dock in the service of the company, instead of saying, ‘Go, boys!’ you must pull off your coat and say, ‘Come on, boys!’ and then let them follow.”14 He put all of his 250 pounds into it, bringing energy and dynamism to the job. And he so loved doing it he even gained weight over the next few years.
He shortly had redwood pilings up to thirty feet long stacked on the Sacramento levee, waiting to support the future railroad bridge over the American River, along with timbers for trestles, and imported ties as well. Soon the materials were coming in at the rate of a schooner-load a day. Judah, meanwhile, in New York, had ordered forty-two freight cars, six locomotives, six first-class passenger coaches, along with switches, turntables, and other track equipment for the first fifty miles of the CP—leaving Huntington to find some way of paying for them, which he did, despite having to bid against the federal armies.15
THE Pacific Railroad Bill specified that the Sierra Nevada would commence where Lincoln said they commenced. This was a matter of great importance to the men paying the bulk of the cost of building the line. They decided to work on Lincoln, the man responsible, first of all through officials in California. Governor Stanford asked the state’s official geologist, Josiah D. Whitney (after whom California’s highest mountain is named), where was the point at which the mountains began.
Whitney set off in a buggy with Charles Crocker as his guide. Whitney felt that of course the Sacramento River was the ultimate base of the region’s tilt, and thus the place where the mountains began, but the land to the east was as flat as it could be. Crocker took him to Arcade Creek, about seven miles to the east, and there showed Whitney a fan of reddish earth that came out from the foothills. Whitney said that seemed to him as fair a place to begin as any, and put that opinion down on official paper.
If the CP could get Lincoln to accept that opinion, it would move the Sierra Nevada fifteen miles west, thus bringing the railroad an extra $240,000 in government bonds.
Aaron Sargent, Judah’s old friend, was no longer in the Congress but still in Washington, and he took the information to the President. He showed Whitney’s report to Lincoln and argued for Arcade Creek as the beginning point for the Sierra. Lincoln said that seemed about right to him. As Sargent commented, “Here you see, my pertinacity and Abraham’s faith moved mo
untains.” (Another report has Lincoln saying, “Here is a case in which Abraham’s Faith has moved mountains.”)16
Judah was opposed. There was no way the mountains began at Arcade Creek. He refused to sign an affidavit, telling Strong he could not because “the foothills do not begin here.”17 But his protest went unheeded. The Big Four were glad to get the extra subsidy. Judah complained to Anna, “I cannot make these men appreciate the ‘Elephant’ they have on their shoulders, they won’t do what I want and must do.” He went on, “We shall just as sure have trouble in Congress as the sun rises in the east if they go on in this way. They will not see it as it is. Something must be done.” But as to what, he couldn’t figure. He certainly couldn’t come up with the money to pay for that something. Nevertheless, he told Anna, “I have brought them a franchise and laid it at their door. Rightly used it gives them unlimited credit throughout the world, and they would beggar it!”18
DESPITE Judah’s misgivings, there was more money coming in. In April 1863, as Lee’s army prepared to swing into Chancellorsville to fight General Joe Hooker’s army, Governor Stanford managed to prod the California legislature into donating to the CP millions of dollars in state bonds, to be issued at the rate of $10,000 per mile after the completion of specified amounts of track. In return, the railroad agreed to transport, without charge to the state, convicts for prison, inmates for insane institutions, materials for the state agricultural fair and indeed for all state buildings, and state militia. Stanford also got the legislators to authorize Sacramento and Placer Counties to vote on the issuing of bonds for the purchase of stock from the railroad, as well as the city of San Francisco. In the event, Sacramento voted for $300,000 and thirty acres of city land for the CP’s use. Placer gave $250,000, and San Francisco voted for $600,000.
Many were jealous of the CP and more than a few were determined to wreck it. A typical slander: “The whole matter resolves itself simply into this: Leland Stanford & Co. have . . . bamboozled the people out of a stupendously magnificent franchise, worth hundreds of millions. . . . It is to them, and to them alone, that all the benefits, all the profits inure.” To which the editor of the Sacramento Union quite rightly replied, “If it is worth so many millions, why should not the county of Placer become a subscriber, and thus obtain an interest in those millions?”19 Nevertheless, the sums voted for were not immediately available. They were held up by various court actions. It took more than a year and a half to get San Francisco to pay up.
WORK on the railroad proceeded, slowly. Judah was out in front of the graders, laying out the exact line through Dutch Flat and over the summit. In the mountains he was always happy. In this case, even happier, because he had hired two young engineers who were proving to be godsends. One was the thirty-three-year-old Samuel Skerry Montague, lured by Judah away from the Sacramento Valley Railroad. Montague was a rangy, slim, black-bearded New Hampshire man. He had failed at gold mining in California but taught himself location engineering. He had an undoubted skill as a surveyor and railroad man, especially with such a master as Judah to teach him. The other was Lewis M. Clement, a Canadian canal engineer hired by Judah because, like Montague, he had an ability to learn.
One day Judah sent Clement off by himself to do some surveying, to see how he would do. When Clement returned much earlier than anticipated, Judah said sternly, “I did not expect to see you back until you had finished, young man.”
“I have finished,” Clement replied, as he handed to Judah a complete report. Together that summer Montague and Clement helped Judah and the crews solve many of the engineering problems in building a railroad in one of the world’s toughest mountain ranges.20
Down in the American River Valley, progress was painfully slow. Still, Crocker was learning. The labor problems were excruciating. Only the bridge over the river went as planned. For the rest, Crocker had to wait until fall for the first rails to arrive, which meant that some of the original grading washed out in heavy rains and had to be redone. That meant more shoveling for the graders, more loading of dirt and debris onto handcarts, more dumping, more cash to be paid out by the CP.
In the war, meanwhile, at the beginning of May 1863, the Army of Northern Virginia defeated the Union forces at Chancellorsville, and General Robert E. Lee began his preparations to invade Pennsylvania. In the Western theater, Grant began the siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi. In California, despite the Union’s heavy losses in battle and the perilous state of the war, work on binding the Republic together east to west continued.
IN early May 1863, Judah came down from the mountains to attend a directors’ meeting in Sacramento. There the Big Four announced that they were tired of bearing all the costs themselves and wanted every director to be equally responsible for the money required to build the road. Judah was unwilling and unhappy. On May 13, he wrote his friend and Dutch Flat resident Doctor Strong, “I had a blowout about two weeks ago and freed my mind, so much so that I looked for instant decapitation. I called things by their right name and invited war; but counsels of peace prevailed and my head is still on.” Only barely. Meanwhile, “my hands are tied.” Judah reported, “We have no meetings of the board nowadays, except the regular monthly meeting, which, however, was not had this month, but there have been any quantity of private conferences to which I have not been invited.” Thinking it over, Judah added, “I try to think it is all for the best, and devote myself with additional energy to my legitimate portion of the enterprise.”21 He and his assistant Lewis Clement were working at the railroad offices regularly until past midnight, making estimates of the costs of eventual repair shops and other buildings.
In early summer, Judah had his next report printed and distributed. He used it to reply to a severe criticism raised by L. L. Robinson, who was one of the owners of the Sacramento Valley Railroad and one of the leading figures charging that the CP intended only to build the railroad to Dutch Flat and thereafter make money off the wagon road. Robinson also charged that Judah had made his original surveys over the Donner Pass while he was working for the Sacramento Valley line. Further, he wanted to know why the CP had not used the older line from Sacramento to Auburn and thus saved money. Because, Judah said, first of all the Sacramento line was eight miles longer than his location from K Street in Sacramento to Auburn. Second, the congressional appropriations in the Pacific Railroad Bill of 1862 did not apply to any already constructed road. Third, the bill required American iron rails, whereas the older line was constructed with English rails. Fourth, the Sacramento Valley line was heavily mortgaged, and the federal aid in the bill was to constitute a first lien on the road. Fifth, because the old road needed a great deal of repair and rehabilitation work. There were other reasons, but this was enough.22
Judah’s report saved the CP, and thus its principal owners, the Big Four. Nevertheless, trouble persisted, and got worse. Judah did not approve of Crocker’s construction methods and was suspicious—rightly—that the other three in the Big Four were sharing the stock of the CP that Crocker & Company were receiving. That July, Huntington returned from New York for a short but squalid visit. The Union had won a three-day battle at Gettysburg and thus turned back the Confederate offensive. On the next day, July 4, Grant had forced Vicksburg to surrender. Still, there was trouble in California.
Judah wrote Strong, “Huntington has returned and has . . . more than his usual influence. . . . The wagon road seems to be a tie which unites them [the Big Four] and its influence seems to be paramount to everything else. . . . They do not hesitate to talk boldly, openly before me, but not to me, about it. They talk as though there was nobody in the world but themselves who could build a wagon road.”23
Huntington walked along the riverbank to observe Crocker’s grading and was furious. “I had given orders that the railroad was to go up I Street to Fifth and thence to B Street and out to the levee,” he later said. But Judah had his own ideas and was running over the slough beyond I Street to Sixth and E Streets, and then out to the new levee,
where the line diverged to the north and crossed the American River. According to Huntington, at the slough “water overflowed every year,” and Judah’s route would require more of the riprap-stone ballasting to protect the embankment. Work had been going on for several days when Huntington saw it. He admonished Judah, who told him that the other directors had approved his route. “I replied,” said Huntington, “it will cost $200,000 more at least to put the road here, and I then ordered him to move the road.”24
Huntington was pigheaded, but Judah was also stubborn. He refused to carry out Huntington’s order, and the road is today on his line.
Huntington and Judah argued about everything. Judah felt that he was being pushed to a back seat as a hired hand on “his” railroad. Huntington was almost contemptuous of Judah. Some five years later, he said in a letter to E. B. Crocker, “There never were two peas more alike than Gen’l Dodge and T. D. Judah.” He was one of the very few men who knew them both, and the only one to compare them to two peas. “If you should see Dodge you would swear that it was Judah,” he went on, “and if you had anything to do with him you would be more than satisfied. The same low cunning that he [Judah] had. Then a large amount of that kind of cheap dignity that Judah had.”25
In Huntington’s view, Judah had nothing to complain about. The CP had picked him up when no one else would. The directors had raised his salary from an initial $100 a month to almost $500 per month and given him a stock-option plan that let him purchase five hundred shares of $100 stock at half-price. And he still demanded deference. To hell with that.