 |
| View of the Union Pacific Grade (left) and the Central Pacific Grade (right). The United States Congress established the route of the Transcontinental Railroad during the Civil War, but comparitively little work on the railroad took place until the war was over. The Central Pacific Railroad started construction in January 1863 in Sacramento, California. It took until mid-1868 for the Central Pacific crews to build the grade through the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Because of the Gold Rush, labor in the west was difficult to find, so the Central Pacific imported about 10,000 Chinese laborers for their workforce. The Union Pacific Railroad started construction in December 1863 in Omaha, Nebraska. The Union Pacific labor force consisted of 8,000 to 10,000 men drawn from the vast pool of the unemployed after the Civil War including Irish, German, and Italian immigrants, ex-slaves, and veterans for both sides. Although the Union Pacific had a comparitively easy task of building the rail line across the flat country of the Great Plains, they faced harsh weather, Indian raids, and the drunken bloodshed and other troubles associated with the "Hell-on-wheels" towns established along the route as the railroad crews moved west. |
 |
 |