America’s most famous railroad photo erased 12,000 Chinese workers from history

Chinese Workers’ Deadly Fight for Transcontinental Railroad Equality

The Sierra Nevada mountains nearly stopped America’s first transcontinental railroad cold. By 1865, white workers quit the deadly job after laying just 50 miles of track.

In desperation, Central Pacific hired 50 Chinese laborers as a test. Soon after, thousands more came from China’s Guangdong province.

These men hung from cliff faces to set explosives, worked for half the pay of white workers, and lost hundreds of lives to avalanches and accidents.

When 3,000 Chinese workers struck for equal pay in 1867, bosses simply cut off their food until they returned to work. Today, Golden Spike National Historical Park tells their forgotten story.

White Workers Quit While Railroad Bosses Got Desperate

By mid-1864, the Central Pacific Railroad faced a big problem. They had built only 50 miles of track through the Sierra Nevada mountains.

White workers kept quitting to look for silver in Nevada mines.

Charles Crocker wanted to hire Chinese workers, though his construction boss James Strobridge and company president Leland Stanford didn’t like the idea.

The company tried to find 5,000 white workers but got just a few hundred.

In January 1865, they tested 50 Chinese workers, who did such good work that Central Pacific started bringing thousands more from China.

Thousands Left China’s Troubled South for Railroad Work

Between 1865 and 1869, Central Pacific brought in 10,000-15,000 Chinese workers, with some counts reaching 20,000 total.

Most came from Kaiping and nearby areas in Guangdong province, leaving behind poverty, hunger, disease, and social problems.

They arrived in San Francisco without knowing English, then traveled to Sacramento where the railroad work began.

By 1867, Chinese workers made up 80-90% of Central Pacific’s workforce, the largest group of Chinese workers ever gathered in America.

Half Pay for the Same Work Became Standard Practice

Chinese workers earned $26-31 monthly for six-day weeks at first, later raised to $35. White workers got $35-40 plus free food and housing.

Chinese workers paid for their own food, lodging, and tools, taking home about half what whites earned for the same work. They worked 11-hour days while whites worked 10 hours, with longer shifts in dangerous tunnels.

Workers organized themselves into groups of 30 men with leaders who handled their pay, since the company rarely wrote down individual Chinese names.

Men Dangled From Cliffs to Plant Explosives

Chinese workers built 690 miles of track and dug 15 tunnels through solid granite in the Sierra Nevada. The most dangerous job involved hanging from ropes off cliff faces to plant explosives.

Their lives depended on how quickly others pulled them back up after lighting fuses.

They used hand tools, black powder, and later unstable nitroglycerin to blast through granite too hard for normal methods.

The Summit Tunnel stretched 1,695 feet through solid rock, 124 feet below the mountain surface, taking over two years to finish.

Forty Feet of Snow Buried Work Camps Alive

The winter of 1866-67 brought some of the worst weather ever seen, with over 40 feet of snow covering work sites. Workers lived in the tunnels they dug or in rough shacks completely buried by snow.

They made air holes through chimneys and lived in darkness for months. Avalanches killed entire crews, with one slide alone killing 20 men.

Some workers vanished in smaller snow slides.

When spring came, work crews found bodies still holding shovels or picks, frozen where they stood when the snow hit.

Tunnel Blast Killed Workers and Sparked Outrage

A huge tunnel explosion on June 19, 1867, killed one white worker and five Chinese workers. The blast happened as crews used more dangerous nitroglycerin to cut through the hardest granite.

This tragedy pushed Chinese workers over the edge after months of risky conditions. The deaths showed how Chinese workers got the most dangerous jobs while getting the lowest pay.

Workers started talking about taking action together, something the railroad bosses never expected.

Three Thousand Workers Walked Off the Job Together

Around 3,000 Chinese workers organized a strike on June 25, 1867, covering 30 miles between Cisco and Truckee.

They asked for $40 monthly wages to match white workers, 10-hour days instead of 11, shorter tunnel shifts, and no more beatings from bosses.

The strike stayed peaceful, with workers simply staying in their camps. Even Central Pacific officials seemed impressed by how well organized it was.

This became the biggest labor protest in American history up to that point.

Railroad Boss Starved Strikers Into Submission

Charles Crocker, the Central Pacific director, refused all worker demands. He used what he called a “cruel but effective” plan by cutting off all food to the Chinese camps.

The company kept the striking workers isolated for eight days and wouldn’t discuss their demands. Crocker gathered the hungry strikers and told them he “would not be dictated to” and that he made the rules.

After eight days without food, the strike ended on July 1, 1867. None of the Chinese demands were officially met.

Workers Laid Ten Miles of Track in One Day

Despite the failed strike, Chinese workers pushed through the Sierra Nevada. They finished the Summit Tunnel in November 1867.

The Central Pacific built 37 miles of snow sheds to protect the tracks from future avalanches, creating what engineers called “the longest barn in the world.”

Chinese crews laid track at amazing speed across Nevada’s desert. In one famous day, they set a record by laying over 10 miles of track in just 12 hours.

By 1869, Chinese workers had laid 690 miles of Central Pacific track.

Not One Chinese Face Appeared in Famous Photos

The transcontinental railroad finished with great celebration at Promontory Summit, Utah, on May 10, 1869. Eight Chinese workers moved the final rail into place before the famous golden spike ceremony.

Though Chinese workers made up 80-90% of the Central Pacific workforce, not a single Chinese face showed up in the famous Golden Spike ceremony photographs.

The iconic Andrew J. Russell photograph showed only white railroad officials, engineers, and workers celebrating. The people who did most of the work stood somewhere off-camera, unseen and uncredited.

Railroad Builders Faced Exclusion After Completion

Nobody knows exactly how many Chinese workers died building the railroad.

Estimates range from a few hundred to over 2,000 from explosions, avalanches, accidents, and exposure. After the railroad finished, many Chinese workers spread across the West.

They found jobs in lumber mills, restaurants, laundries, and other service businesses. Growing anti-Chinese feelings led to the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned Chinese laborers from entering the U. S. and stopped immigrants from becoming citizens.

The massive Chinese contribution to America’s first transcontinental railroad stayed mostly forgotten until recent decades, when descendants started pushing for recognition of their ancestors’ sacrifice.

Visiting Golden Spike National Historical Park, Utah

Golden Spike National Historical Park at Promontory Summit honors the Chinese workers who built the Central Pacific Railroad through dangerous Sierra Nevada conditions from 1865-1869.

You’ll pay $10-$20 entrance (credit card only) and can see replica locomotives Jupiter and No. 119 with daily demonstrations May through October.

Take the East Auto Tour to visit the Chinese Arch and explore the Big Fill Loop Trail to see original construction challenges these workers faced.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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