Chang also published “Ghosts of Gold Mountain” a book about the Chinese workers, out this month. Stanford is mounting a major project called Chinese Railroad Workers in North America to give voice to the thousands of men who built the railroad. “If it wasn’t for their work, Leland Stanford could have been at best a footnote to history and Stanford University may not even exist,” he wrote. Stanford’s name lives on in the university he founded.Ĭhang sees a direct link between the Chinese and the school. Stanford became governor of California, Crocker a banker, Hopkins a patron of the arts and Huntington a developer and railroad tycoon. The Big Four became multimillionaires and grandees of the West. The Big Four began their enterprise in Sacramento but soon moved to San Francisco where they built grand mansions on Nob Hill. Huntington - the men who organized and ran the Central Pacific. The names that survived were those of the Big Four- Stanford, Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins and Collis P. Over the years, the role of these railroad workers has always been a point of pride in the Chinese American community, even as it was ignored in the history books and even as the names of the thousands of workers were lost in the mists of history. They had built one of the greatest projects of what historians came to call the American Century, but were forbidden by later United States law from becoming American citizens. “Who else but Americans could drill through miles of solid granite? Who else but Americans could have laid 10 miles of track in 12 hours?”Īs Volpe spoke, Philip Choy, then chairman of the Chinese Historical Society of America, sat in stunned silence. “Who else but Americans could drill 10 tunnels in mountains 30 feet deep in snow?” Volpe said. When the nation celebrated the 100th anniversary of the railroad in 1969, John Volpe, transportation secretary under President Richard Nixon, gave the keynote address.
Hart / Stanford University Archives and Special Collectionsīut the Chinese achievement was erased from history. Migrant Chinese laborers are depicted on the site of construction of the Transcontinental Railroad in an undated photo. “Without the Chinese migrants the transcontinental railroad would not have been possible,” Stanford University Professor Gordon Chang wrote in a new study of the railroad and the role of the Chinese. Stanford and his compatriots got all the credit in the history books, but Chinese men made up 90% of the Central Pacific workforce. Leland Stanford, president of the Central Pacific, drove a ceremonial golden spike, but a selected crew of Chinese workers laid the last rail. It united California and the West with the rest of the country and was considered one of the engineering wonders of the age. The meeting of the tracks on -150 years ago this week - made it possible to cross the continent by rail for the first time. That’s the point where the Central Pacific met the tracks of the Union Pacific, which had come west from the Mississippi River. More than 10,000 laborers recruited from China worked building the Central Pacific Railroad east from Sacramento 640 miles to Promontory Point, Utah. It took only 150 years, but the Chinese who built America’s first transcontinental railway are finally getting the recognition they deserve. Hart / Stanford Univesrity Archives & Special Collections Show More Show Less
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Photograph Bettmann Archive Show More Show Less 2 of2 A Chinese immigrant laborer is depicted in an undated photo at the site of a tunnel under excavation as part of the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad. Civil War, it was necessary to import 15,000 Chinese to help build the first northern transcontinental line. Due to the scarcity of labor following the U.S. 1 of2 (Original Caption) Chinese coolie labor on the Northwest Pacific Railway in the 1880s.
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