Episode 85

Transcontinental Railroad (pt 3): The Central Pacific, Chinese Workers, & The Golden Spike

"A Run to Salt Lake City." Daily Evening Bulletin. May 10, 1869. Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers (accessed February 4, 2021) at: https://link-gale-com.erl.lib.byu.edu/apps/doc/GT3008902163/NCNP?u=byuprovo&sid=NCNP&xid=134c4b5c

Ambrose, Stephen E. Nothing Like It In the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001. 

“Auburn, California.” Union Pacific. Accessed February 2021 at: https://www.up.com/goldenspike/sacramento-promontory.html#auburn_ca.

Bain, David Haward. Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad. New York: Penguin Books, 2000.

Boller, Henry A. Among the Indians. Philadelphia, PA: T.E. Zell. Accessed at: https://archive.org/details/amongindians00boll/page/406/mode/2up.

Brown, Dee. Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow: The Epic Story of the Transcontinental Railroads. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2001.

"Celebrations of the Completion of the Pacific Railroad." Arkansas Gazette. May 16, 1869. Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers. Accessed at: https://link-gale-com.erl.lib.byu.edu/apps/doc/GT3008829578/NCNP?u=byuprovo&sid=NCNP&xid=4819fd76

Chang, Gordon H. Ghosts of Gold Mountain: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019. 

Chang, Gordon H. The Chinese and the Iron Road: Building the Transcontinental Railroad. Redwood: Stanford University Press, 2019.

“Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project.” Stanford University. Last modified August 31, 2020. Accessed at: http://web.stanford.edu/group/chineserailroad/cgi-bin/website/.

“Colfax, California.” Union Pacific. Accessed February 2021 at: https://www.up.com/goldenspike/sacramento-promontory.html#colfax_ca.

Dearinger, Ryan. The Filth of Progress: Immigrants, Americans, and the Building of Canals and Railroads in the West. Oakland: University of California Press, 2015.

Dodge, Grenville Mellen. Romantic Realities: The Story of the Building of the Pacific Roads. Omaha: J.S. Tebbets, 1889. 

"Driving the Last Spike." Daily Evening Bulletin, May 10, 1869. Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers (accessed February 4, 2021). https://link-gale-com.erl.lib.byu.edu/apps/doc/GT3008902143/NCNP?u=byuprovo&sid=NCNP&xid=64422942

“Explosion at Colfax—Six Men Killed.” Daily Alta California. April 18, 1866, 2. Accessed at: https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=DAC18660418.2.8&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN--------1.

“Four Special Spikes.” Golden Spike. National Park Service. April 30th, 2020. Accessed February 2021 at:  https://www.nps.gov/gosp/learn/historyculture/four-special-spikes.htm.

“General.” Deseret News, 07 May 1869. Newspapers.com. Accessed at: https://www.newspapers.com/clip/29794900/excitement-grows-as-last-spike-ceremony/.

Griswold, Wesley S. A Work of Giants: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1962. 

Heuterman, Thomas H. Movable Type: Biography of Legh Freeman. Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1979.

Johnson, Michael W. “Rendezvous at Promontory: A New Look at the Golden Spike Ceremony.” Utah Historical Quarterly 72, no. 1, (2004): 47 - 68.

Journal History of the Church, May 30, 1868. Accessed at: https://catalog.churchofjesuschrist.org/assets?id=397f5b3d-1cfa-4908-8a8a-89e4ac48900f&crate=0&index=243.

Journal History of the Church, September 5, 1868, 1. Accessed at: https://catalog.churchofjesuschrist.org/assets?id=c88bcdac-1b4e-4db8-b305-da5dd29cdefc&crate=0&index=34.

Kennedy, John F. “Rice Stadium Moon Speech.” NASA. Accessed at: https://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/ricetalk.htm.

Klein, Maury. Union Pacific: The Birth of a Railroad, 1862 - 1893, Vol. 2. New York: Doubleday, 1987. 

“Letterbook, v. 11, 1868 August 27-1870 February 9.” Brigham Young Office Files, 1832-1878. Church History Library Catalog. Accessed at: https://catalog.churchofjesuschrist.org/assets?id=967db140-f060-437f-b583-794f7affa2d0&crate=0&index=111.

McClain, Charles J. "The Chinese Struggle for Civil Rights in Nineteenth Century America: The First Phase, 1850-1870." California Law Review 72, no. 4 (1984): 543-544. Accessed February 10, 2021 at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3480446.

Mei, June. "Socioeconomic Origins of Emigration: Guangdong to California, 1850-1882." Modern China 5, no. 4 (1979): 463-501. Accessed February 10, 2021 at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/188841.

Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2022. “Nitroglycerine and Dynamite.” The Nobel Prize. Accessed at: https://www.nobelprize.org/alfred-nobel/nitroglycerine-and-dynamite/.

O'Shaughnessy, M. M. (Michael Maurice). The Municipal Railway of San Francisco, 1912-1921. San Francisco: J.A. Prud'homme Composition Co, 1921. Accessed at: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101065142737&view=1up&seq=15&q1=1860.

Parrot v. Wells. Fargo & Co., 82 U.S. 524 (1872). Accessed at: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/82/524.

Rayner, Richard. The Associates: Four Capitalists Who Created California. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009. 

“Report of the Joint Special Committee to Investigate Chinese Immigration.” Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum. February 27th, 1877. Accessed February 2021 at: http://cprr.org/Museum/Chinese_Immigration.html#Report.


Stevens, Thomas M. “The Union Pacific Railroad and the Mormon Church, 1868-1871: An in Depth Study of the Financial Aspects of Brigham Young's Grading Contract and its Ultimate Settlement.” Master’s thesis, Brigham Young University, 1972. Accessed at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/5139/.

Stewart, John J. The Iron Trail to the Golden Spike. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1969. Accessed at: http://cprr.org/Museum/Stewart-Iron_Trail.html

"Storm on the Union Pacific-Sufferings of Passengers-Dangerous Condition of the Road." Daily Evening Bulletin. May 10, 1869. Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers. Accessed February 5, 2021 at: https://link-gale-com.erl.lib.byu.edu/apps/doc/GT3008902161/NCNP?u=byuprovo&sid=NCNP&xid=5a2d84fe.

Takaki, Ronald. Strangers From A Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans. London: Little, Brown and Company, 1998.

“Terrible Calamity.” Daily Alta California, April 17, 1866,1. Accessed at: https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=DAC18660417.2.4&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN--------1.

“The Catastrophe.” Daily Alta California, April 18, 1866, 2. Accessed at: https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=DAC18660418.2.18&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN--------1.

“The Celebration Yesterday.” The Deseret News, May 12, 1869. Newspapers.com. Accessed at: https://www.newspapers.com/image/?clipping_id=29795673&fcfToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJmcmVlLXZpZXctaWQiOjI4NjM0MDI0NywiaWF0IjoxNjEyNTM4MzE4LCJleHAiOjE2MTI2MjQ3MTh9.6MkUUqRIHRnrxEMP6PcsnTxDT0eFGSERU1alC6aDNPI.

 “The Pacific Railroad.” New York Tribune, May 12, 1869. Accessed at: https://www.loc.gov/item/sn83030214/1869-05-12/ed-1/

The San Francisco Call, May 10, 1910. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Library of Congress. Accessed at: https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85066387/1910-05-10/ed-1/seq-4/

"The Seizure of Durant, His Party, Etc." Daily Evening Bulletin, May 10, 1869. Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers. Accessed February 4, 2021 at: https://link-gale-com.erl.lib.byu.edu/apps/doc/GT3008902162/NCNP?u=byuprovo&sid=NCNP&xid=639487fa.

“Tunneling in the Sierra Nevada.” American Experience. PBS. Accessed February 2021 at: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/tcrr-tunneling-sierra-nevada/.

Twain, Mark. Roughing It. Hartford: American Pub. Co., 1891. Library of Congress. Accessed at: https://www.loc.gov/item/07023335/

Voss, Barbara L. "The Archaeology of Precarious Lives." Current Anthropology 59, no. 3 (2018): 287.

Walker, David.  Railroading Religion: Mormons, Tourists, and the Corporate Spirit of the West North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2019.