Author Stephen Ambrose is one of my favorite historians, and he manages once again to bring to the forefront another example of American greatness, the monumental feat of uniting America east and west, as the Civil War raged to unite the country north and south.

Ambrose is interested in how it was done, not necessarily why. Why was easy. We had huge tracts of land, but it took half a year to get from east to west, whether by land (over the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains) or sea (around South America or through Panama's pre-canal days). Once a railroad linked New York to San Francisco, the trip took seven days.

Nothing Like it in the World is a straightforward non-fiction history work by Ambrose. He uses short and crisp sentences to the point, cites many sources (although, perhaps not enough considering the recent plagarism flap also involved this book), and there is no flowery language to spice it up besides patriotic fervor celebrating the achievement of American ingenuity. There are so many names and places you have to reread paragraphs and flip back pages to make sure you recall a person or place.

A frustration is that at one point Ambrose confuses facts. He makes it seem as if the track had less track eighteen days later on opposite pages - April 9, 690 miles east of Sacramento, April 27, 678 miles from Sacramento (p.345-6).

Also, the book could've used more maps; I had to keep an atlas next to my bed to find locales Ambrose mentions (and a map on p. 343 should be placed 300 pages prior!). Though, the 32 pages of photos help.

After years of debate, the building of the railroad begins

The title of the book is taken from Union Pacific engineer Silas Seymour, on weighing how much had been accomplished, "Nothing like it in the world." It ranks near the greatest engineering feats of American history, along with the Hoover Dam and Panama Canal, among others. It could be said to define the industrial revolution, as the country had just been connected by telegraph. Central Pacific engineer Lewis Clement wrote "he was glad to contemplate 'the bond of iron which is to hold our glorious country in one eternal union.'" (340)

After all, it was just over thirty years before that the first American train, The Best Friend of Charleston made its initial run in 1830, the second, The DeWitt Clinton, in 1831. Back then, railroad pioneers couldn't begin to consider the reality of a railroad stretching across the nation. Not until the early 1850s was it even a possibility.

It is a great irony that to build the unifying railroad using a Northern route, the South had to secede and thus withdraw votes from Congress, enabling an approval for beginning the transcontinental railroad that otherwise would have been bottled up in legislation. And all the more a major step just to get started while the Civil War raged, yet at the same time all the more necessary to link east and west while fighting each other north and south.

The Union Pacific company built west from the Missouri River at Omaha, Nebraska, in 1865, and the Central Pacific company started in 1863 in Sacramento and moved east. Though supported by bonds and promises of land along the railroads, the construction was far from a government-sponsored effort.

"It was too risky a proposition for most American capitalists. No one knew if a train could be run over the Rockies in winter, or what the road over the mountains and through the desert would cost to build. With a war on, there were too many, too fat, profits to be made in shorter-term, less risky investments. People could not imagine how big this project was going to be, or the potential returns." (p. 88)

The railroad companies had a difficult time getting enough funding to start it, and even more so during the construction. As you'll see later, the tactics they used to ensure construction would continue unabated became one of the biggest political and business scandals in our country's history.

In reality, though, my eyes glossed over much of the business wheeling and dealing; I do the same in the business section of the paper. I really just wanted to get to meat and potatoes of building, of the process it took to get 1,700 miles of track laid across mountains and plains and deserts. But I can't have one (construction) without the other (business).

The 19th century scientists weren't quite exact, like today's on again, off again global warming theories: "The directors told (UP Engineer Grenville) Dodge to begin selling lots belonging to the railroad, and he did, with some success, matching the government's price of $2.50 per acre. His best argument was that rain followed the tracks. Dodge thought that the rain belt moved westward at the rate of eight miles per year behind the tracks. Twenty-five years after the UP went through Nebraska, he declared that it now rained as much in the Plains as it did east of the Mississippi, and to such an extent that farmers in Colorado or Nebraska could raise fine crops without irrigation, 'right up to the foot of the mountains.' This had been predicted, he claimed, by a 'Prof. Agassis in 1867,' who said it would come by 'the disturbance of the electrical currents, caused by the building of the Pacific railroad.'" (212)

"So work on as though Heaven were before you and Hell behind you." - Collis P. Huntington

When the Civil War ended in 1865, Americans set their sights to the west, an "almost explosive force the industrial, financial, and transportation systems of the North were let loose. The United States began to take its place as a world power." (133)

Lessons learned in winning the Civil War were put to use building the transcontinental railroad. Union Pacific engineer and Union General Grenville Dodge said it "'taught the American people that there was no problem in finance or relating to the development of the country so great that its people did not feel able to grasp and master it.'"

Ambrose, as he frequently does, goes further, punctuating chapters by celebrating American ingenuity:

"No problem. Not mountains, not deserts, not Indians, not finances or swindlers, not distance, not high interest rates or a scarcity of labor, not politicians whether venal or stupid, not even a civil war or its aftermath. Americans were a people such as the world had never known before. No one before them, no matter where or how they lived, had had such optimism or determination. It was thanks to those two qualities that the Americans set out to build what had never before been done." (253)

It must've been some sight to see the proficiency of the work. Every thirty seconds with the cry of "Down!" a new rail was established, and the companies moved miles a day. When they really got going, both railroads would lay down an average of two-and-a-half miles per day, sometimes three, sometimes five, even as much as eight (looking for records), and the CP set the record at ten near the end.

The Big Story

This was the biggest story of the day, by far, so much so that even the lead horse, Blind Tom, was a national star:

"The lead horse, always, was Blind Tom, a noble, venerable, full-blooded horse who pulled the front wagon. His name came from his condition - he couldn't see. The workers pronounced him 'perfect' in his role. No one claimed less sagacity for Blind Tom than that for any of the humans around him. When his wagon slipped and got stuck in a gap between the joints, he tugged with herculean force to drag it through. He became something of a celebrity from being mentioned in so many newspaper accounts of the construction." (180)

A reporter for the New York Times wrote that "what he was witnessing 'is the genuine American genius - the genius of the West especially, which welcomes obstacles and looks on impossibilities as incentives to greater exertion.'" (177)

The story even became news in Western Europe. Colonel W. Heine, a Civil War veteran serving as secretary of the U.S. Legation at Paris, drew large and enthusiastic audiences for lectures. "To widespread approval, he paid homage to Lincoln, 'who had the honor of signing the land-grants of the greatest railroad in the world with the same pen that had decreed the abolishment of Slavery.' Throughout his speech, Heine drew cheers and ovations from the audience, who only wished that their government had the land to give away and the foresight to follow the Yankee lead." (250)

The Race is On

Ambrose is almost haughty of the American idea of competitiveness in business, that pride drove the competing companies to get the transcontinental railroad completed in just six years, rather than the ten or even twenty that some projected: "...the great race was on, exactly as the Congress and the President and the people they represented wanted. ... It was indeed such an American thing to do. A race, a competition. Build it fast. The company that won would get the largest share of the land and the biggest share of the bonds. The cost to the country would be the same if it took ten years or twenty years or five years to build. People wanted to get to California, or back east. They wanted to see the sights, to ship the goods. The road could be fixed up later. Build it. Nail it down. And there was no better way than to set up a competition. This was democracy at work." (194)

Ambrose provides a timetable to compare the building of the two sides, switching from the Union Pacific one chapter to Central Pacific the next, because they began building at different times and had very different obstacles to overcome. During the Civil War he provides dates of battles to give the reader an idea of what the time was during a certain bit of construction and the country's mental state.

The Central Pacific needed a two-year head start, if only because it faced the daunting task of going over the Sierra Nevada mountain range, which included the need to blast fifteen tunnels through mountains. The CP also had to ship supplies from the east, meaning around South America or through Panama. The costs were so high that the company was losing money at record rates, staying afloat only due to the initial wealth of the owners.

Meanwhile, the Union Pacific cruised along the plains of the Midwest with supplies closer at hand, averaged over two miles a day, collecting government bonds and selling its land grants along the way. The UP also had more readily available workers, while the CP had to bring in Chinese workers who were more willing to perform hard labor for low wages.

A lot of time was lost to the elements, especially the snow in the West, rain in the Plains, and cold for seemingly most months of the year. A reporter for the Salt Lake Daily Reporter: "'The elements are obstacles which even railroad enterprise and energy sometimes cannot overcome.'"

And as such, the loss of life was enormous, but no one can even guess an exact number except to say thousands. "There were accidents of all kinds, mainly from blasting powder. Sometimes the heavy explosions started avalanches, and entire camps of workmen would be buried alive. Near the Summit Tunnel an avalanche carried away some twenty Chinese, whose bodies were found after the spring thaw. The CP eventually sent their bodies to their homeland for burial. How many died we don't know. The historian Thomas W. Chinn has written that, without a doubt, the 'loss of life was heavy.' (204)

Perhaps one of the most impressive feats was due to weather concerns, when the CP built snow sheds over the tracks that covered some fifty miles! One stretch alone was twenty-eight miles without a break. (235) Dubbed the "Longest House in the World," it helped to prevent major delays from snowfall in the mountains.

Heroes receive Due Credit

Just as every Ambrose work, he seizes upon "little guy" heroes like Andrew Higgins in D-Day, and in Nothing Like It In the World he devotes much time to Ted Judah of the Central Pacific and Grenville Dodge of the Union Pacific.

Judah was the first 'dreamer' and the engineer of the CP, dying before the first dirt was turned in 1863. Famed journalist Horace Greeley called the building of the railroad "the grandest and noblest enterprise of our age," to which Ambrose says, "If any one man made the transcontinental railroad happen...it was Theodore D. Judah." (82)

Dodge was a Union General during the Civil War, and his influence and RR expertise was essential to the construction of the transcontinental railroad. Despite being the chief engineer for the UP he refused to leave his post in the army until the country was united after the Civil War, and even when it was finished - through connections with generals U.S. Grant and William T. Sherman - Dodge made sure the Indian problem was addressed during the building of the railroad. (88)

Also important were the men who braved the unknown terrain of the west, the surveyors: "The surveyors had nearly two thousand miles to cover, over every kind of terrain. ... And for nearly the whole of the route, there were no maps. There was almost nothing to indicate settlements, for other than Salt Lake City, there were none of any size and only a few hamlets. Nor were there any topographical maps. They had nothing to indicate lakes or rivers, or the shape of the mountains over or around which the railroad would pass. Like Lewis and Clark and other explorers, they had only a vague idea of what lay ahead.

"Despite their handicaps, the original surveyors and the ones who followed to mark out the line for the graders did a grand job. Nearly a full century later, in the 1950s and 1960s, when the surveyors flying in airplanes and helicopters and equipped with modern implements and maps laid out a line for Interstate 80, they followed almost exactly the route laid out by the original surveyors. Travelers in the twenty-first century driving on I-80 are nearly always in sight of the original tracks." (127)

Engaging a Hostile Native Population

Besides weather and geography, the builders faced a much more feared obstacle to building a transcontinental railroad. Still regarded as "savages" in the 1860s, many times for seemingly good reasons, the Native Americans were not happy to see this "iron rail" on their land, sure to bring the white man west.

The Sioux and Cheyenne were "decidedly hostile" towards the Union Pacific, because they foresaw it "providing great benefits to the whites had an additional disadvantage for the Indians in that it split the Great Plains buffalo herd into two parts, because buffalo would not cross the tracks. It meant doom for the Indians' way of life. No longer could they be free and independent, living off the buffalo herds. They could either follow the way of the Pawnee and live on reservations, cared for by the white man, or get killed" (173)

For the most part the Indians fought hard for their independence, killing scores of surveyors, graders and builders of the railroad, constantly making war party raids throughout the line, causing an uproar among the newspapers who talked up the "scalps taken, the wounds inflicted, the savages practice of firing arrows into dead bodies or mutilating them in other ways." (214) This forced the U.S. military to classify them as enemies of the state and a warrior people, with no choice but to search out and punish the natives.

"We've got to clean the damn Indians out," Dodge declared, "or give up building the Union Pacific Railroad. The government may take its choice." For his part, Gen. William T. Sherman wrote at this time, "The more we can kill this year the less will have to be killed the next year, for the more I see of these Indians the more convinced I am that they all have to be killed or be maintained as a species of paupers." (223)

Thankfully it didn't come to the extermination of Indians, although many died on both sides. The coming of the Americans to the West spelled the end to the era of Indians, now confined to reservations or joining the melting pot of the United States.

Invaluable Workers from the Far East

The Central Pacific company had a difficult time finding laborers; most American men were out west to find gold in California and Nevada, and worked only briefly for the railroad in order to get some extra cash, then moved on. Soon enough, though, the leaders of the CP discovered the value of "Chinamen." Chinese laborers by the thousands joined up and many sailed across the Pacific for the sole purpose of working on the railroad, and "performed superbly." (153)

"Augustus Ward Loomis, a Christian minister who came to observe them, noted that the Chinese set an example for their white co-workers in diligence, steadiness, and clean living. In an article for the Overland Monthly he wrote, 'They are ready to begin work the moment they hear the signal, and labor steadily and honestly until admonished that the working hours are ended.' "The Chinese were ideal workers. Cheap. Did as they were told. Made a quick study and after something was shown or explained to them did it skillfully. Few if any strikes. The same for complaints. They did what no one else was willing or able to do." (162)

Leland Stanford, governor of California and one of the 'Big Four' of the CP, won many voters by denouncing the Chinese. Soon enough, though, he admitted "Without the Chinese it would have been impossible to complete the western portion of this great National highway." (164)

Not just armed with racist tendencies, Stanford also "argued that the government subsidy had been more of a detriment than a boost to the companies, because of all the conditions attached to the bonds."

One wonders today if the liberal campus of Stanford University would ask to change the name of the school if they knew of the history of its founder, a man who deplored the Chinese as a lesser race and treated them harshly in the building of the railroad, and despised the bureaucracy of government.

Mormons re-join America

There was no finish line to the race between the Central Pacific and Union Pacific, but each was hoping to get the biggest share of eventual business from Salt Lake City, by far the largest settlement thus far in the Western U.S. It also was the home of the Latter-Day Saints, or Mormons.

Mormon leader Brigham Young was thus sought after by both companies to provide manpower and money for the construction, and he relished the role. Ambrose notes that "from the first he had been an enthusiastic promoter. . . . There was, in addition, the hope that when regular train service east and west was inaugurated Salt Lake City would become a major tourist center." (279, 281) Twenty-two years after trekking westward for religious freedom, the people of Utah were finally back in the fold as Americans.

It wasn't in their minds then, of course, but I'm sure Young would be happy to see that 133 years after the railroad was complete, Salt Lake City is the center of the world as host of the Winter Olympic Games. And the city still looks for acceptance and affirmation by the Gentile (non-Mormon) world.

The Country United

On May 10, 1869 at Promontory Summit, Utah, on the north side of the Great Salt Lake, the Transcontinental Railroad was completed. The Union Pacific and Central Pacific leaders straddled the line and pounded in the Golden Spike.

A gift from David Hewes of San Francisco, the spike "was six inches long, had a rough gold nugget attached to its point (later used to make rings for President Grant, Sec. of State William Seward, Oakes Ames, Stanford, and some others), and weighed eighteen ounces. It was valued at $350." (360)

The spike was even connected to the telegraph, so that when the final blow was hit, the message went out across the country. "The Liberty Bell in Philadelphia was rung, cannons fired off all over the country and shrieks of fire whistles as the wire went out. ...”

Actually, humorously, what was supposed to be the last hit came from Calif. Gov. Stanford. But he whiffed, striking the rail but not the spike. "It made no difference. The telegraph operator closed the circuit and the wire went out, "DONE!" (366)

Awesome Achievement Ends in Scandal

Just as there are good guys, Ambrose tracks down the bad guys as well. In this case they didn't wear black hats and sharp spurs, but the finest suits of the time. The ones to boo in Nothing Like it in the World are known as the Big Four of the CP, and Doc Durant of the UP who failed in his effort to be known as the Man Who Built the Union Pacific Railroad, losing out to Gen. Dodge's good heart and solid work ethic.

Chiefly, Ambrose doesn't have much good to say about such men who bilk hardworking people to further fatten already-bulging wallets - and rightfully so. There was mismanagement from the start, as the leaders batted heads for years just to get started on construction.

Bigger than even Enron in 2002, the railroads' building ended with the biggest scandal of the nineteenth century. The bogus construction company formed by the UP, the Credit Mobilier's tactics to get money for the building was suspect at best, and the stockholders included seven from Congress. But what ultimately caused the uproar was that, "money that flowed from the Union Pacific into the Credit Mobilier and what was done with it - which wasn't to pay the contractors, the subcontractors, or the laborers who had gotten the railroad from Omaha to the Utah border - was further enriching a relatively few already wealthy men who milked the corporation, the government, and ultimately the people for their fat and ill-gotten profits." (320)

This began just as the building was coming to a close and readers looked to the papers for the latest details on the monumental construction effort. Basically, just as happens today with the Major Story of the Day, we're at the They're So Big and Popular It's Time To Drag Them Down phase of media popularity. So once the railroad was complete, there was a half-year of hearings.

"The case was a smash hit. People couldn't get enough of it. Papers everywhere ran summaries of the testimonies. Reporters listened for every word. As in so much else, the UP was once again leading the way as the central character in the action. As well it should have been, since what was being argued about was nothing less than the relationship between government and business. Practical matters were involved, such as when government intervention or regulation is justified. The headlines the case produced were nevertheless gripping." (375)

Still, in the end we know these were imperfect men. There was so much money at stake, but also great risks to accept great profits. I can see both sides, because one could almost make the case that a little corruption was necessary in order to build the transcontinental railroad quickly. Ambrose concludes that, "An automatic reaction that big business is always on the wrong side, corrupt and untrustworthy, is too easy, and the error is compounded if we fail to distinguish between incentives, for example, and fraud." (377)

Trivia Date RR was finished: May 10, 1869, 12:47 p.m. Location: Promontory Summit, Utah, 90 miles NW of Salt Lake City Trains: UP - No. 119, CP - Jupiter Where is the Golden Spike now: Stanford U. Wording on the Spike: "May God continue the unity of our Country as this Railroad unites the two great Oceans of the world." Length of track: 1,776 miles Most track laid in one day: April 28, 1869, the CP laid ten miles and fifty-six feet of track

Have the Rails Lost Significance?

The story of the Transcontinental RR also brings to mind the sense of adventure in riding the rails, especially a holiday using a train as a primary transportation. Heck, even just on a half-hour subway train one meets all kinds of society and learns more about the place one lives, something an everyday car trip to town going from point A to B can't provide. It's a joy that's like being a child again, seeing these mammoth engines rumble down the track and make anyone feel a little smaller, almost reassuring me as I can feel the rumble in my bed over a mile away in the middle of the night.

Unfortunately, trains don't foster as much of a sense of awe anymore (why waste two days when it takes four hours to fly cross-country?), but it also harkens back to a different time, when the railroad was the king of travel. Actually, more of us could use a train trip. Maybe the east and left coast elitists wouldn't be so smug about 'flyover country' (middle America, the red states on the map in the 2000 election) if they took a leisurely train ride through the heartland and met common Americans, not just hanging out with those who think "Sex and the City" is how all women act and think is the answer to male-female relationships.

Ambrose is an unapologetic patriot. It's no wonder he's so loved by those on the Right most, those who love the U.S. first and know they'll get a view of 'love American even through times of trouble.' As a result, this book is filled with hyperbole that I eat up.

"The conclusion in (Putnam's Magazine) was that the railroads, especially the transcontinental railroad, had "lightened human toil, made men richer in blessings and in leisure, increased their activity, shielded them from tempest and famine, enlarged the area available for man's residence and subsistence, enabled him to do more in the same period of time and spread knowledge and virtue over all this earth." (371)

But if there ever was an achievement of mankind that deserves a little extra oomph, it is the building of this railroad. All the sacrifices, all the hard work, and to unite a country is quite a feat, indeed.

Promontory Summit, Utah,:

Golden Spike National Historic Site
The On-Line Magazine of Rideable Model Railroading: Volunteering at the Golden Spike
The Photographs of Charles Savage: Joining the rails at Promontory Summit
Golden Spike Ceremony, May 10, 1994
OnlineUtah.com
Utah Railroad Attractions
Roadside America: Golden Spike Rant

Transcontinental RR:

PBS' The American Experience: The Iron Road
Central Pacific Railroad: Photographic History Museum
Union Pacific Railroad: History and Photos
Stanford U.: The Last Spike
Museum of San Francisco: Driving the Last Spike
Carnegie Museum featuring the Union Pacific Collection in Council Bluffs, Iowa
The History of the First Locomotives In America
The First American Transcontinental Railroad