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Transcontinental railroad sesquicentennial (1 Viewer)

Dennis Nicholls

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I'm a day late, but Friday was the 150th anniversary of the completion of the first transcontinental railroad across North America.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/05/10/say-happy-birthday-americas-first-transcontinental-railroad/

While Apollo 11 took on an almost celestial elegance—brainy engineers harnessing chemicals and physics to explore the heavens—the Transcontinental Railroad represented pure, brute force, man’s sheer willpower clearing a path for the machine. The crews that worked on the project included Chinese immigrants who came to the United States to work on the railroad’s punishing terrain in the Sierra Nevada mountains, Civil War veterans, Mormons who helped with the final Utah-based segments, and others. They faced countless hazards on the job site.

As their infamous “Hell on Wheels” name implies, the ramshackle tent cities that cropped up along the railroad’s route, full of gambling halls, bars, saloons, and brothels, provided their own dangers. One estimate claims that for every worker killed on the railroad, four more died in these makeshift establishments, whether from alcohol poisoning, disease, or vigilante violence.

My great-great-grandmother Anna Cook came out to California the hard way in 1862. If she'd waited just 7 years she could have traveled in style.
 

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