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Geography of Chinese Workers Building the Transcontinental Railroad

web.stanford.edu · 8,294 words · saved by 1 readers

Chinese workers were an essential part of building the Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR), the western section of the first transcontinental railroad across the United States. The Chinese numbered 10,000 to 15,000 during high points of construction of the CPRR; and they perhaps amounted up to 20,000 in total between 1865 and 1869, composing as much as 90 percent of the workforce for much of the construction. The eastern section of the line, built by the Union Pacific Railroad Company, required tracks laid across vast flat expanses of mid-western prairie, but the western portion of the line required tunneling through the imposing Sierra Nevada mountains – blasting and digging cuts through deep rock, carving out 15 tunnels through solid granite in high altitudes, dumping large quantities of dirt and rubble to create fills, constructing trestles across deep canyons, building retaining walls. The terrain was a bit easier once they reached the high desert of Nevada and Utah, but there they had

Geography of Chinese Workers Building the Transcontinental Railroad Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project Geography of Chinese Workers Building the Transcontinental Railroad A virtual reconstruction of the key historic sites Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project Co-Directors: Gordon H. Chang and Shelley Fisher Fishkin Lead Writer: Hilton Obenzinger Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA) Project Manager: Gabriel Wolfenstein Creative Director: Erik Steiner Lead Designer: Stephanie Niu Design and Programming: Leo Barleta Yue Li - ©2018 Chinese Railroad Workers in

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