The Celestials: Building the Transcontinental Railroad

In 1863, two of the biggest railroad companies in the United States, the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific rail companies, both agreed that it was time to build a link across America. Settlers were pouring into the west, gold had long been discovered in California, and many people wanted to travel there and try their luck. Businesses also wanted an easier way to send their goods from east to west and back again. The best answer was to build a transcontinental railroad. Finally, one set of rails would run between the West Coast and the East Coast. Construction would start from each end and meet in the middle. But there was a problem. There weren’t enough people to work. How would the railroads ever build the more than 2,000 miles of track without the 5,000 workers they would need?

The first railroad workers were Irish immigrants. But the work was very hard, and many workers quit. Others disappeared to try their luck in the gold fields. When some of the Irish workers went on strike, Charles Crocker from the Central Pacific Railroad decided to try hiring Chinese workers instead. Many people were prejudiced against Chinese workers, but Crocker gave them a chance. He considered them excellent workers who believed in doing a good job. And because they referred to their home country of China as the Celestial Kingdom, they were soon nicknamed “Celestials.”

Most Chinese workers had come to the United States to make enough money to one day return home and live comfortably with their families. They came to California because of the Gold Rush. But they faced prejudice and difficulty in finding work, until the railroad began hiring them. At first, it seemed unlikely that the Chinese workers, who averaged 4’10” in height and weighed an average of 120 pounds, could possibly work with steel rails that weighed 532 pounds each and were 24 feet long. James Harvey Strobridge was a railroad construction foreman at the time. He was skeptical about hiring Chinese workers, but Crocker told him, “Did they not build the Chinese Wall [the Great Wall of China], the biggest piece of masonry in the world?”

The railroad companies considered the Celestials to be excellent workers, no matter what jobs they did. They started out filling wagons with rock and debris, but quickly moved to laying railroad ties and rails. Soon they were using picks, shovels, and black powder or nitroglycerin explosives to blast tunnels through mountain rock. In one part of the Sierra Mountains, the Celestials hung in small baskets suspended 2,000 feet above the American River. They tapped holes into the rocky cliffs, then inserted sticks of dynamite. After lighting the fuses, they tugged on the rope and were yanked upward, hopefully before the dynamite exploded. In this way, they blasted a roadbed for the railroad into the cliffs.

The Celestials had an advantage over the other workers because of how they lived. The Irish workers ate boiled potatoes and stale meat and drank either whiskey or water from puddles or streams. The Chinese workers, however, ate healthier food, such as rice, dried fish, vegetables, dried fruit, and pork. They drank only tea. They also bathed and washed their clothes regularly. Because of their lifestyle, they did not get sick as often as the other workers. They were able to avoid getting dysentery, a disease that came from drinking river water contaminated by human waste.

The Celestials were exploited by the railroad, however. They were not paid as much as the other workers, making about $25 a month, and they had to pay for their own food and supplies. White workers made $35 with lodging, food, and supplies included.

Working conditions were harsh. The Celestials lived in small uninsulated tents or cabins, which were freezing cold in the winter. During one especially bad winter, the workers traveled to the work sites through snow tunnels. They didn’t see the sun for weeks at a time. They also shoveled snow away from the rails and tunnels. The heavy snows often caused avalanches, which once swept away a cabin of Chinese workers. Their bodies were not found until the next spring.

The railroad companies were certain they had found a valuable work force, and began to advertise in Chinese cities for more workers to come to California. Charles Crocker was so impressed by their skills that he challenged his workers (most of whom were Chinese at this point) to lay 10 miles of track in a single day. Crocker had made a $10,000 bet with Thomas C. Durant, of the Union Pacific Railroad, whose workers held the record for laying 7 3/4 miles of track in a single day. On April 28, 1868, teams of Celestials and Irishmen went to work. They shoved rails into place, holding them as other workers pounded in the spikes. More workers leveled and filled around the wooden ties. By the end of the day, they had met Crocker’s challenge and he had won the bet. The workers, however, received nothing except for praise. Only the names of the 10 Irish workers were recorded in the log book that day.

Finally, the two ends of the transcontinental railroad met in Promontory, Utah. Even though the railroads had employed a total of 12,000 Chinese workers, the only part they played during the celebration was to carry and place the very last section of rail. The railroad owners pounded in a golden spike. On May 10, 1869, the word “Done!” was telegraphed across the country. The railway was complete. None of the photographs of that day show any Celestial workers. Afterwards, they boarded Central Pacific trains back to California, or to Canada to continue building railroads there. Some settled in the west. But for much of American history, their role in connecting the East and the West was forgotten. No one even knows just how many Celestials died during the construction of the railroad.

On the 150th anniversary of the railroad’s completion, the Celestial workers were finally given recognition for their accomplishment. Transportation Secretary Elaine L. Chao said in her speech, “My hope is that their astounding achievement will become part of American folklore, known to every schoolchild and every American, in recognition of the vast and wonderful coat of many colors that makes our nation great.”