Laissez-faire relies on __________________ to regulate prices and wages. Whoever reached Ogden first could establish a depot and capture the lucrative Salt Lake business. The Union Pacific Museum archives contain more than 500,000 images. The contract, using government subsidized funding, was for more than $94,000,000. Its symbolic power riveted the attention of a nation. They were at the country’s emerging railroad hub for the first meeting of the Board of Commissioners of the Union Pacific Railroad and Telegraph Co. Each road graded a line far beyond where the tracks would finally meet, with the hope that the government would approve one line over the other. The meeting site at the summit of Promontory Point permitted completion of the railroad without having to build across any portion of the Great Salt Lake, a feat that may have been either too difficult technologically or just too time consuming for the parties involved. Although it doubled progress, the increase in speed came with a terrible price, and it soon proved to be too dangerous. Main image: East and West Shaking Hands at Laying of Last Rail, 1869. From this cause several Chinamen were severely hurt. encourage rapid construction of the tracks allow the companies to build stations along the way encourage the growth of towns along the tracks. Our Irishman were in the habit of firing their blasts in the cuts without giving warning to the Chinamen on the Central Pacific working right above them. Finding wood for ties on Nebraska's nearly treeless prairie was one of the UP's worst problems. Why did the government offer each railroad company land along its right-of-way? The luxury passenger express hurtling past smalltown depots, the slow freight trains chugging through industrial zones, the commuter locals shuttling between suburban stations and urban terminals heralded the forces of modernization and touched millions with the romance of the rails. the total value of all goods and services that a country produces, Why did supporters of laissez-faire believe the government should interfere with the, to protect property rights and maintain peace. The skies cleared over Promontory on May 10, 1869. According to the Chinese Railroad Workers Project, Central Pacific started with a crew of 21 Chinese workers in January 1864. The goal was to make a tunnel, so holes had to be drilled in the rock face for explosives. True to form, however, the government compromised, selecting a meeting site halfway between the ends of the graded lines. Sherman knew that the bison was the source of food, clothing and shelter for the plains tribes. 1900 - The Union Pacific Railroad gains control of the four-year-old Oregon Railroad & Navigation Company, re-establishing its Chicago-Portland transcontinental route. In warmer months, it was unimaginably hot. The crews lived in 20 cars, including dormitories and an arsenal car containing a thousand loaded rifles. . . When Stanford went to drive his, he missed. As the road extended westward, canyons full of cedar trees near North Platte fell to the ax, and workers crafted hewn ties in the mountain forests of Wyoming. However, a large Chinese work force, numbering 10,000 or more, originally drawn to California by the gold rush, was eventually drafted into the effort. Grenville Dodge. Working under the direction of General Herman Haupt, he documented the construction efforts of army engineers, in particular their work on military railroads. Two men seize the end of a rail and start forward, the rest of the gang taking hold by twos, until it is clear of the car. ", "In the half-century following 1880, the railroad industry reshaped the American landscape and reoriented American thinking. Westbound traffic on Grand Avenue backs up in the single lane beneath a temporary Union Pacific Railroad bridge at Route 41 on Tuesday, … The UPRR main line started in Council Bluffs, Iowa and moved west to link up with the Central Pacific Railroad line, which was built eastward from Sacramento. Who was the engineer who directed the westward growth of the Union Pacific Railroad? UP's E.H. Harriman reaches a deal for the UP to purchase the 20% company share held by Collis Huntingon. The Indians repeatedly attacked without warning, and the UP acted as its own army. Dodge wrote, "To supply one mile of track with material and supplies required about forty cars, as on the plains everything – rails, ties, bridging, fastenings, all railway supplies, fuel for locomotives and trains, and supplies for men and animals on the entire work – had to be transported from the Missouri River. Dodge wrote, "Central Wyoming was desolate, dreary, not susceptible to cultivation and only portions of it fit for grazing." What little free time they had they spent in drinking, carousing and fighting. Tough as nails and given to dressing like a Cossack, Jack Casement worked his men hard. The government may take its choice.". Taking the law into his own hands, Jack Casement undertook the discipline of the most incorrigible railroad workers. ", David McCulloch writes, "In the same year the road was completed, 1869, another monumental epic engineering feat was completed; the Suez Canal. What is a closed shop? The solution was practically larger than life. The American Federation of Labor pushed for closed shops. ", Before long, the UP was laying a mile or more a day. 1901 - The Union Pacific Railroad gains control over the Southern Pacific. The railroad had opened the heart of the continent, changing it forever. There was a chronic labor shortage, as most able-bodied men preferred trying to strike it rich in the gold mines. As Dodge notes in "How We Built the Union Pacific," this site was "at the summit of Promontory Point;" words which perhaps caused the confusion in names that continues to this day. (The G&CU never made it to Galena.) The railroad was completed to Huntley, Marengo and Belvedere in 1851, Rockford in 1852 and Freeport in 1853. Dodge himself was obsessed with the problem. ", John R. Stillgoe, author of "Metropolitan Corridor", If you are a supplier, contractor or carrier, please visit the. A steel company that owns the coal mines, limestone quarries, and iron ore fields it depends, combining firms in the same business into one large corporation, When a single company achieves control of an entire market, a legal arrangement that allows one person to manage another person's property, A person who manages another person's property is called a, technique for breaking a union in which the company refused to allow workers onto their property. UP would build the rail from Omaha, Nebraska, to Promontory, Utah, (a vast frontier region spanning 1,037 miles) where they would meet the rail constructed by Central Pacific, which was building from the west coast. . Congress passed the Pacific Railroad Act in 1862, committing the nation to building a rail link between the East and West coasts. These were the pick and shovel men, the teamsters, blacksmiths, masons, carpenters, mechanics and track layers. Some 300 miles of main line track were built in 1865–66 over the flat prairies. The transcontinental railroad crossed western plains and mountains and linked the West Coast with the rail networks of the eastern United States. During the Civil War, Dodge had built or rebuilt railroads so fast that they used to say of him, "We don't know where he is, but we can tell where he has been." According to the book, "Union Pacific Railroad," by historians Joe Welsh and Kevin Holland, an amended Pacific Railroad Act of 1864 increased this figure to twenty alternate sections (or around 12,000 acres for every mile completed). St. Louis, Missouri Ogden, Utah Omaha, Nebraska Chicago, Illinois. What were the two railroads companies that built the transcontinental railroad? The measure authorized the Union Pacific Railroad—controlled by Sidney Dillon and Thomas Durant—to build westward from Omaha, Nebraska. In winter, the cold was beyond belief. Close behind the first gang come the gaugers, spikers and bolters, and a lively time they make of it. It made sense for big corporations to continue operating during poor economic times, their operating costs were small, compared to their fixed costs. Gleaming trains carrying a fleet of officials set off from Sacramento and Omaha. Construction of the Union Pacific Railroad pushed west from. The workers, many of them Irish immigrants or veterans of the Civil War, were paid the average of a dollar a day. Reed's job was to keep the supplies moving and oversee construction in the field. The Central Pacific Railroad Company, building from California, hired Chinese migrants. The Pacific Railroad Act In summer 1862, Nearly 80 commissioners assembled in Chicago, along with dignitaries, journalists, and other interested parties gathered in Chicago in late August. It looks like your browser needs an update. He wrote to General Sherman, commander of the Military Division of the West, "We've got to clean the Indian out, or give up. The telegrapher signaled "Done." Dodge wrote, "It fell to my lot to be chief of this party.". To construct a road, the Union Pacific had to cross land occupied by American Indians. Dodge wrote, "They could lay from one to three miles of track per day as they had material, and one day laid eight-and-a-half miles." Railroad Construction. This brought about a truce at once. Pacific Railway Acts, (1862, 1864), two measures that provided federal subsidies in land and loans for the construction of a transcontinental railroad across the United States.. "East and West shaking hands at laying of the last rail," Promontory Summit, Utah. The Union Pacific began laying track from Omaha to the west while the Central Pacific headed east from Sacramento. The Union Pacific was largely financed by federal loans and land grants, but it overextended itself through its involvement in the Crédit Mobilier scandal, in which a few manipulators reaped enormous profits.After exposure of the scheme, which left the railroad badly in debt, the company went into receivership in 1893. The House of Representatives voted for the line on May 6, 1862, and the Senate did also on June 20. Who operated a steel company in Pittsburg? Therefore, as we moved westward, every hundred miles added vastly to our transportation. Westward construction continued. Chinese laborers at work on construction for the railroad … A 650-foot bridge spanning Dale Creek had to be constructed. On they came. One day the Chinamen, appreciating the situation, put in what is called a "grave" on their work, and when the Irishmen right under them were all at work let go their blast and buried several of our men. . Who was the head of the American Federation of Labor? Winter weather was the CP's greatest, most underestimated problem. A light car, drawn by a single horse, gallops up to the front with its load of rails. By April 1864 the jubilance of groundbreaking had long ago faded into the ether. the UP would pay me well, but I'm afraid I might have trouble with Durant." Jack Casement wrote to his wife, "This is an awful place; alkali dust knee-deep. By the end of 1865, the UP had spent more than $500,000 and laid only 40 miles of track, or as one newspaper said, "two streaks of rust across the Nebraska prairie." Progress was slow initially, but the pace quickened with the end of the Civil War. Building east from California, the CP bridged ravines with trestles. Durant, representing the UP, was to drive a silver spike, and Stanford of the CP, a golden one. to encourage the rapid construction of the tracks, Before the _____________________, most manufacturing enterprises were owned by a few. At the word of command the rail is dropped in its place, right side up with care, while the same process goes on at the other side of the car. The UP, plagued by weather, flash flooding in Weber Canyon and a revolt by unpaid railroad workers at Piedmont (featuring the kidnapping of Durant), were late. The track laying crew was managed by the Casement brothers, Dan and Jack. Oh no! A shortage of workers in California forced the Central Pacific Railroad to hire about 10,000 workers from. The crews worked seven days a week, 12 to 16 hours a day, with few weekends to themselves. It was now possible to leave San Francisco and arrive in New York in 10 days. Thanks to the support of the Union Pacific Foundation and several other donors, the John W. Barriger III National Railroad Library is able to make some of … From the Native Americans' perspective, it was imperative to protect their families and homeland against the imminent invasion of a flood of immigrants. In a report to Dodge, Casement wrote that " few of the sinners had survived the encounter.". Finally, the unification of east and west was at hand. Eradicating much of the bison population provided an earlier end to the hostilities than otherwise might have been the case. It is in triple time, three strokes to the spike. A shortage of workers in California forced the Central Pacific Railroad to hire about 10,000 workers from. Between Ogden and Promontory each company graded a line, running side by side, and in some places one line was right above the other. Suddenly the world was getting smaller, an idea that inspired Jules Verne to write 'Around the World in Eighty Days.' Building west from Omaha, there were problems of a different nature. The Galena & Chicago Union progressed west from the Des Plaines River to what is now West Chicago, where it turned northwest to Elgin, opening for business there in January 1850. A small sampling is shown in this photo gallery. Out west, the CP was having troubles of its own, blocked by the massive, solid granite ridges of the Sierra Nevada. Building west from Omaha, there were problems of a different nature. Eventually crews constructed enclosed wooden snow sheds around the track, enabling them to continue making progress. In his letter of acceptance to Durant he wrote, "I will agree to work for the UP, but I must have absolute control in the field." The next day presented a strange anticlimax, as all hurried back to distant cities on the new lines, leaving Promontory an almost deserted whistle-stop on the new Transcontinental Road. company owns all of the different businesses on which it depends for its operation, . Construction got a slow start in Omaha, Nebraska, eastern terminus of the Union Pacific Railroad. The first to reach the site was guaranteed a bonus. The Central Pacific would build from the west and the Union Pacific from the east. This feat was accomplished by Samuel B. Reed, chief of construction and formerly a locating engineer. Weather was a constant opponent as well. The laborers upon the Central Pacific were Chinamen, while ours were Irishmen, and there was much ill feeling between them. The Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad (reporting mark DRGW), often shortened to Rio Grande, D&RG or D&RGW, formerly the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad, was an American Class I railroad company. The railroad started as a 3 ft (914 mm) narrow-gauge line running south from Denver, Colorado, in 1870.It served mainly as a transcontinental bridge line between Denver, and Salt Lake … They come forward at a run. The actual cost to Credit Mobilier was $44,000,000. The weather subsided, tracks were relaid and the New York Board of Directors wired $500,000 to subcontractors to make the payroll and free Durant. The father of railroads in this state was the Pacific Railroad project. To ensure the best experience, please update your browser. Register to access Secure Tools, Applications and Reports to help simplify your business. Western Union offered live coverage direct from the scene to waiting multitudes, and reporters and photographers immortalized the occasion which culminated four years of backbreaking labor. In a letter to his brother, Dodge wrote, " . What are some examples of operating costs? In an era when most IT organizations look to buy off-the-shelf software, avoid doing custom coding, and allow the use of more mass-market consumer technology than they ever thought possible, Union Pacific CIO Lynden Tennison is an unapologetic believer in building rather than always buying the hardware, software, and systems that underpin its $20 billion railroad shipping business. The longest trestle on the line, it rose 150 feet up from the bottom of the canyon, swayed in the wind and was terrifying to cross. 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