Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum

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"A light car, drawn by a single horse, gallops up to the front with its load of rails.

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. They come forward at a run. 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. Less than thirty seconds to a rail for each gang, and so four rails go down to the minute ... close behind the first gang come the gaugers, spikers, and bolters, and a lively time they make of it. It is a grand 'anvil chorus' ... It is played in triple time, 3 strokes to the spike. There are 10 spikes to a rail, 400 rails to a mile, 1,800 miles to San Francisco — 21,000,000 times those sledges to be swung: 21,000,000 times are they to come down with their sharp punctuation before the great work of modern America is complete." –Dr. William Abraham Bell, Newspaper, 1866

Completion of the Pacific Railroad, May 10, 1869
Harper's Weekly engraving
based on the
Charles R. Savage photograph.

Joining of the Rails, May 10, 1869, Promontory, Utah
(Detail of Savage and Ottinger Stereoview, "Engineers shaking hands.")
Chief Engineers for CPRR (Samuel Skerry Montague) and UPRR (Grenville M. Dodge).
Courtesy David Wood. Also see the A.J. Russell image.

The first transcontinental railroad was completed when the rails of the Union Pacific, reaching westward from Omaha, Nebraska, and those of the Central Pacific Railroad, reaching eastward from Sacramento, California were joined, completing the coast-to-coast connection. The telegraph signaled a waiting nation: "DONE!"

(Purchase a poster showing the famous A.J. Russell photograph.)

Stereographs
Sacramento photographer and artist Alfred A. Hart documented the CPRR construction in 364 stereoviews.

To bring out the 3-D effect, move your cursor
back and forth across the picture's edge:

Did you know that punched railroad tickets were the forerunners of computers?

(Logo from CPRR Ticket)

Did you know that supermarket bar code labels were originally "just extended ... dots and dashes" of printed Morse code and the first practical use was to identify railroad boxcars?

"At Sacramento ... The Central Pacific company had thirty locomotives gayly decked ranged on the city front, and at the signal of a gun announcing the driving of the last spike on the road the locomotives opened a chorus of whistles, and all the bells and steam whistles in the city joined."

CPRR Depot, Sacramento, California (detail of A. A. Hart Stereograph) with Steamer Chrysopolis. Courtesy Dana Scanlon Collection.

A. J. Russell View at Promontory Summit. Courtesy National Park Service.

The Central Pacific Railroad Company of California was organized on June 28, 1861 by a group of Sacramento merchants known later as the "Big Four" (Collis P. Huntington, [Gov.] Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker); also called "The Associates," they are best remembered for having built the western portion of the first transcontinental railroad ("the Pacific Railroad") through California, Nevada, and Utah. A.J. Russell View at Promontory Summit. Courtesy National Park Service. (Right)

Cape Horn. Carleton Watkins. Courtesy Royal Geographical Society.

A practical mountain route for the rail line was first conceived and surveyed by Dutch Flat, California gold prospector and drugstore owner Dr. Daniel W. Strong and engineer, Theodore Dehone Judah, who obtained the financial backing of the California group and won federal support in the form of the Pacific Railroad Act, signed in 1862 by former railroad lawyer Abraham Lincoln. C.E. Watkins View at Cape Horn. Courtesy Royal Geographical Society. (Left) [More Watkins]

Government bonds, required to be repaid after completion of construction, were issued to the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroad Companies as they completed construction milestones, and they were granted sizable parcels of land along the entire length of the track as an added incentive, placing the CPRR and UPRR in competition — a race to the finish at an undetermined meeting point.

Pacific Railroad Construction 1863-1869
1863—1869
"The Last Spike" by Thomas Hill (detail in gold, rear cover).

Timelines: [CPRR/UPRR]—[Transcontinental RR]—[Completions]—[CPRR]—[Photography]—[RR's]—[RR Events]—[US RR's]—[West]—[SF]—[Chinese]

The Central Pacific began laying track eastward from Sacramento, California in 1863, and the Union Pacific started laying track westward from Omaha, Nebraska, two years later in July, 1865. To meet its manpower needs, the Central Pacific hired thousands of Chinese laborers, including many recruited from farms in Canton. The crew had the formidable task of laying the track crossing California's rugged Sierra Nevada mountain range and had to blast fifteen tunnels to accomplish this. The crew of the Union Pacific, which was composed largely of Irish immigrants and Civil War veterans, had to contend with Indian attacks and the Rocky Mountains. On May 10, 1869, after completing 1,776 miles, 4,814 feet (2,859.66 km) of new track, the two rail lines met at Promontory Summit, Utah.
Courtesy Martin Gregor and Bruce C. Cooper.

Locomotive on Turntable (detail of A. A. Hart Stereograph #139)

Great great great grandpa, Lewis Metzler Clement (1837-1914)
was the First Assistant Chief Engineer, later the Acting Chief Engineer,
and also was the Chief Locating Engineer
of the Central Pacific Railroad!

As second in command of the most formidable engineering project of the 19th century, Lewis M. Clement was in charge of locating and constructing the first transcontinental railroad over California's Sierra Nevada Mountains, including blasting the Summit Tunnel through 1,660 feet of solid granite using black power, and building 40 miles of Snowsheds to keep the track clear during winter blizzards.

Tunnel No. 15
Muybridge Stereoview

Lewis Metzler Clement was the engineer in direct charge of the final location, design and construction of the CPRR Division between Colfax and Truckee (miles 75 to 120), by far the most difficult section of the entire Pacific Railroad which included Cape Horn, the Sierra tunnels, and the snowsheds.

" ... The ... crews worked round the clock ... Then, at one in the morning on May 3, 1867, a great, noisy crumbling took place at the east facing, and light from torches in the west could be seen flickering through the dust. ... The Summit had been pierced. The Sierras had been bested. ... young Lewis Clement, the engineer in charge of Summit Tunnel, strode into the now widened bore a week after the breakthrough, surveyor's instruments in hand. With torchbearers stationed every few yards in the 1,659-foot bore, Clement began his first series of observations in the damp and eerie tunnel. During the preceding two years' work he and his assistants had been measuring under conditions never taught about in engineering schools. They had made their calculations under poor visibility on a wildly uneven tunnel floor, plotting a bore not only divided into four distinct parts, but one that had to gradually rise, descend, and curve as it penetrated from west to east. ... the expected margin of error was large, and if the various bores were seriously misaligned, many months of expensive remedial work would have to be done, delaying the Central Pacific Railroad's progress east. ... As Clement finished his measurements and worked out the geometric statistics at a rude desk near the tunnel mouth, he found his most fervent prayers answered. Summit Tunnel's four bores fitted together almost perfectly, with a total error in true line of less than two inches. The seemingly impossible had been achieved. The longest tunnel anyone had cut through natural granite, cut at a daunting altitude in an abominable climate, had been bored by a small army of Chinese thousands of miles from their ancestral home. The Sierras were truly breached and ... the great race across the continent was on. ... " —A Great And Shining Road. By Professor John Hoyt Williams

In addition he had similar charge of the final 200 miles of the line across Nevada and Utah ending at Promontory Summit. In February, 1869, Clement was appointed as one of four members of the Special U.S. Pacific Railroad Commission to inspect and approve the railroad’s location and construction and help to determine the very sticky issue of where the CPRR and UPRR would finally meet. Once the line opened in 1869 Clement added the duties of CPRR Superintendent of Track, a position he held until 1881.

L. M. Clement went on to design and build (also using Chinese laborers) the Southern Pacific Railroad line from Sacramento to Los Angeles via the San Joaquin Valley, and also worked on many urban and cable car lines. Among his works in the area was the design of the cable car turntable at the foot of Market Street in San Francisco. Leland Stanford also sought Clement's help to set up the Mechanical and Electrical Engineering Departments at Stanford University.

Lewis M. Clement
First Assistant
Chief Engineer

(Logo from CPRR Bank Check)

Theodore D. Judah
Chief Engineer
(Watkins Portrait)

Samuel Skerry Montague, CVD. Courtesy of the Mike Bentley Collection.

Samuel S. Montague
Chief Engineer

In an 1887 statement submitted to the U.S. Pacific Railway Commission, Lewis M. Clement summarized the challenges and great obstacles — both physical and financial — which had to be overcome to build the CPRR:

"At the beginning of the construction, the company, knowing the political and commercial necessities demanding the rapid completion of the railroad, determined that nothing which was in their power to prevent should for a single day arrest its progress.

"With this determination in view all energies were bent, fully realizing the physical obstacles and financial difficulties to be overcome.

"The financial difficulties were not lessened by the opinions circulated to the effect that the obstacles were insurmountable; that the railroads then constructed in Europe were as bagatelles compared with the difficulties to be met in constructing the Central Pacific Railroad, and failure was clearly written on the rocky sides of the cañons and the bold granite walls of the Sierra Nevada mountains.
"Not only was it impossible to construct a railroad across the Sierras via Donner Pass, but owing to the great depth of snow, some years reaching an aggregate fall of nearly 50 feet, would be impracticable to operate, and if built must be closed to traffic in the winter months, which would have been the case had not the road been protected at great cost by snow sheds.
"Against these utterances from men of railroad experience the company had to battle in financial circles, forcing them to show that they were not attempting an impossibility, though always realizing the great difficulties."