The Transcontinental Railroad: How the Rails Met at Promontory

On May 10, 1869, a telegraph operator at Promontory Summit in Utah Territory sent a one-word message across the country: "D-O-N-E." The first transcontinental railroad was finished. According to the US National Archives, it cut a cross-country journey of several months to about a week.

Behind that moment were a federal law that paid companies by the mile, two railroads racing toward each other, and a workforce made up largely of immigrants, including more than 10,000 Chinese laborers. The line also crossed Indigenous homelands, with lasting consequences.

This guide draws on the National Archives' copy of the Pacific Railway Act and on research published by Golden Spike National Historical Park, which the National Park Service runs at Promontory.

The law that paid for it

The National Archives explains that Congress commissioned surveys of possible western routes in the 1850s, but private companies would not build without federal help. On July 1, 1862, the Pacific Railway Act provided that help in the form of land grants and government loans for a railroad and telegraph line from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean. It authorized two companies: the Union Pacific, which built west, and the Central Pacific, which built east.

The act's text shows how the incentives worked. The companies received "five alternate sections per mile on each side" of the line, from the odd-numbered sections of public land. Government bonds of $1,000 each were issued as each certified stretch of track was finished: 16 bonds per mile on easier ground, twice that between the mountain ranges, and three times as many on the 300 most mountainous miles. The National Archives adds that Congress eventually authorized four transcontinental railroads and granted 174 million acres of public land for them.

Two companies, two directions

Construction began in 1863. The National Archives says the Union Pacific built west from Omaha, Nebraska, with more than 8,000 Irish, German and Italian immigrants. The Central Pacific built east from Sacramento, California, with a workforce that included more than 10,000 Chinese laborers.

The Central Pacific had the harder start. The Park Service notes that its first two years were slow, partly because of long supply lines and a critical shortage of workers, with the Sierra Nevada still ahead. Workers often quit whenever a rich gold strike was reported. In 1864 managers such as Charles Crocker began looking for other sources of labor.

The Chinese workforce

The Park Service says the Central Pacific was at first reluctant to hire Chinese immigrants because of anti-Chinese prejudice. A first group of 50 workers quickly changed managers' minds. Chinese workers went on to fill many roles, including laborers, foremen, masons, carpenters, cooks, interpreters and medical workers.

How many there were is uncertain, because payroll records were incomplete and seldom named individual workers. Stanford University's Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project says historians estimate that as many as 10,000 to 15,000 were working at any one time, about 90 percent of the Central Pacific's workforce by early 1867. The total was greater still, because workers came and went.

They were treated unequally. The Park Service reports that Chinese workers earned on average 30 percent less than white workers and had to pay for their own lodging, food and equipment. The Stanford project puts the gap more starkly, saying Chinese workers were paid less than half what white workers received. On June 24, 1867, Chinese workers along about 30 miles of line between Cisco and Truckee, California, stopped work. They demanded higher pay, a 10-hour day instead of 11, and shorter shifts in the tunnels. The Park Service calls it the largest organized labor strike in the United States at that time. It lasted a week before the company cut off food and supplies to the camps.

Tunnel work through solid granite was dangerous, and much of it fell to Chinese crews. No one knows how many died. The railroad kept no death records, so historians work from engineering reports, newspapers and descendants' accounts. The Park Service gives an estimate of more than 1,000 deaths, while the Stanford project notes that estimates range from about 50 or 150 to more than 1,000. Their individual stories are hard to recover. Some historians call them the "Silent Spikes," because no letters or diaries by these workers are known to survive, and company records and newspapers seldom named them.

On April 28, 1869, Central Pacific crews laid 10 miles and 56 feet of track in one day to win a bet with the Union Pacific. Eight Irish track layers handled the rails, backed by at least 400 Chinese laborers.

A race that built too much

Because land and bonds were paid by the mile, each company wanted as many miles as it could claim. The Park Service says their grading crews kept going past each other for about 250 miles between Echo, Utah, and Wells, Nevada. They graded parallel roadbeds, not parallel tracks, and traces of those roadbeds still survive. Pressure from Congress finally forced an agreement to meet at Promontory Summit.

May 10, 1869

The Park Service corrects a common error: the rails met at Promontory Summit, not Promontory Point, which is about 35 miles to the south. Some reporters and officials got the name wrong in 1869, and the mistake has been repeated ever since.

The ceremony was partly staged. Workers laid a polished laurelwood tie with holes pre-drilled for ceremonial spikes. The best known, the golden spike, was cast from 17.6-carat gold for the San Francisco contractor David Hewes, who paid for it himself. One side reads: "May God continue the unity of our Country as this Railroad unites the two great Oceans of the world." Leland Stanford of the Central Pacific and Thomas Durant of the Union Pacific tapped the precious-metal spikes gently, so they wouldn't leave a mark. The laurelwood tie was then swapped for an ordinary pine one. An iron spike and hammer were wired to the telegraph so the blows could be "heard" across the country. Stanford missed the spike, Durant missed the tie, and a railroad worker drove it home. The telegrapher sent "D-O-N-E" at 12:47 p.m.

Sources even disagree about the crowd. One Park Service page says about 1,000 people attended. The park's FAQ says accounts vary "between 300 and 1,500." A photograph by Andrew J. Russell, often called "the champagne photo," shows the two locomotives, Central Pacific's Jupiter and Union Pacific's No. 119, nose to nose. The golden spike itself is now at Stanford University's Cantor Arts Center.

What it changed, and for whom

The faster crossing was the railroad's obvious payoff. The Park Service also describes the costs. The railroad crossed the homelands of at least 15 tribal nations, sometimes before any formal agreements were made. It brought more settlement and less access to hunting grounds, water and wildlife. Federal policies of the period encouraged widespread bison hunting, and the collapse of the bison herds hit many Indigenous peoples hard.

For Chinese railroad workers, the decades after completion brought exclusion. The Park Service traces the Page Law of 1875, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and its later extensions, until repeal in 1943.

The Promontory route itself didn't last as a main line. The Park Service says a trestle across the Great Salt Lake, the Lucin Cutoff, bypassed it in 1903, and the Promontory rails were pulled up in 1942 for wartime use.

Key takeaways

• The Pacific Railway Act of July 1, 1862, paid the builders in land and government bonds for each mile completed.
• The Union Pacific built west from Omaha and the Central Pacific built east from Sacramento, with Chinese laborers, estimated at 10,000 or more, making up most of the Central Pacific's workforce.
• Chinese workers were paid less, held a major strike in 1867, and died in numbers no one recorded; estimates vary widely.
• The rails met at Promontory Summit, not Promontory Point, on May 10, 1869.
• The railroad shortened a months-long trip to about a week, and it had heavy costs for Indigenous nations.

Sources

• US National Archives, Pacific Railway Act (1862) (Milestone Documents)
• National Park Service, Golden Spike National Historical Park, Chinese Labor and the Iron Road
• National Park Service, Golden Spike National Historical Park, Frequently Asked Questions
• National Park Service, Golden Spike National Historical Park, Four Special Spikes
• National Park Service, Golden Spike National Historical Park, A Moment in Time
• National Park Service, Golden Spike National Historical Park, Indigenous People
• Stanford University, Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project, Key Questions