I can understand why the UP started at Omaha, and went west until it ran into the CP (more or less) in Utah. That was a lot of (reletively) easy going, and some mountins to contend with in Wyoming and Utah. What I don’t understand, is why CP picked what seemed to be darn near the hardest place to build a railroad-seemingly straight up the mountains through solid granite.
Later, GN, NP, CN, and CP had to battle their way through the Rockies. That was no picnic either, but they had some 20 years more technology, and perhaps some softer(?) rock to deal with. What of the SP and ATSF routes to southern California, or even the UP route from Salt Lake to Oregon? Did they have an easier time of it?
Reading the accounts of what it took to chip through the Sierras, I wonder, with the same amount of effort and money, CP could have built a line from Sacramento to the LA area, east like the eventual SP or ATSF routes, then up to meet UP at say, Denver? Or Pueblo, or Tucumcari? What made the Sierra route imperitive?
You need to find a video or book on the history of the Transcontinental Railroad. A civil engineer named Theodore Judah selected the route of the CP over Donner Pass because he thought it would be the shortest and easiest route of several possible routes he had examined.
He originally planned on going much further north and looking for a suitable pass in far Northern California or southern Oregon until a store owner from Dutch Flats invited Judah to look at the Donnor Pass area.
The southern part of the western U.S. was still unexplored hostile Indian territory on many early railroad maps, and Arizona and New Mexico had not yet become states, so no one knew if there was a suitable, safe route to the south.
The Transcontinental was begun during the Civil War and selecting a southern route would have gone into areas controlled by the Confederacy, so that’s another reason that they never even thought of going southward. They already knew that the UP was building from Omaha and they would have to meet it in Utah.
Actually, I just finished reading Nothing Like it in the World by Stephan Ambrose, about the building of the transcontinental railroad. That’s what lead me to wonder. As I understand it, western Nebraska and Wyoming were still hostile Indian lands. Many workers and soldiers died in skirmishes with the indian people. At the time, Wyoming, Utah, and maybe Nebraska and Colorado weren’t states yet either. I understand what you’re saying about the Civil War, but a southern route, comming up through Denver go through Confederate states? Maybe Texas?
Something I found interesting, was that they weren’t pre-ordained to meet in Utah. It was a race, to see who could go farthest. The surveying and grading crews were hundreds of miles ahead of the track laying crews. As a consequence, CP grading crews made it almost to Wyoming, UP grading crews made it almost to California. There was a stretch, most of accross Utah, I think, where the two ran grades nearly side by side. In the end, Promontory point was picked as the meeting point, and one railroad had to pay the other for grading it had done, only to be utilized by the other.
According to an article in last month’s Railway Age, President Lincoln was responsible for this. In the Pacific Railway Act of 1862, it was stipulated that the entire line be built north of the 32nd Parallel, to keep it entirely in what would eventually be free states (regardless of the outcome of the Civil War, which was being fought at the time). Ever wonder why it was called the Union Pacific, and not, say, the American Pacific or United States Pacific?
The Donner Pass over the Sierra Nevada mountains was also the most direct route east from Sacramento. Already well known route as well. Tracks pass within spitting distance of the spot where the Donner party was stranded just below summit of the pass between Nordon and Truckee. .
Reason 1: Political Reality. Reason 2: Given the outcome of Reason 1, it was the next best choice.
All other things being equal, the first transcontinental would have been built where the Sunset Route is now. The U.S. Government railway surveys showed it was technically the best route, and there was no question in railway circles that it was 1st Choice. But the issue of free states vs. slave states, and north-south politics all intervened to ensure that no northern politician would support the southern route, and the outbreak of the Civil War concreted the decision. (There was, to make it clear, no open path for private interests to build the railway regardless of political decisions as the occupancy of federal lands by a railway without a federal charter was illegal,
…Wow, that’s a lot of interesting reading. Difficult to understand all the confusion where the two lines “met” and overbuild past each other, etc…When to stop and not stop…What confusion…!
While I admit to a vested interest in this subject on behalf of my father (306th Bomb Group), Ambrose also gives incredibly short shrift to the role of the 8th and 9th Air Forces and the RAF in Operation Overlord in “D-Day”. We probably would have had much better books if David McCulloch tackled these topics instead of Stephen Ambrose.
Don’t rely on the Ambrose book to give you an accurate report. I majored in history in college and I can assure you that if I had plagarized “Nothing Like it in the World” and turned it in as my own work I would have been lucky if I pulled a "D
Ambrose is a sad case. He was a very good political historian and wrote the standard college text on U.S. foreign policy 1930-1980, “Rise to Globalism,” which is I think is one of the most clear-headed, honest appraisals of what we did right or wrong. His WWII oral histories are wonderful. Somewhere along the way his commerical success seduced him and he began delegating too much to graduate students who in effect did all the work and got none of the pay or fame (proving you get what you pay for).
You’d think that after the plagarism scandal of “Nothing Like it in the World” emerged that it would have been pulled from shelves and landfilled like Clifford Irving’s fake biography of Howard Hughes, but I still see it prominently displayed in airport bookstores. So much for integrity and honesty on the part of the publisher.
Really it’s not too difficult, The CP and UP were being paid for trackage laid, they built right beside each other until the government stepped in. It was all about the $$$$.
Why over the Sierras? Another reason, it was the straightest, most direct route to the Virginia City area, and the newly discovered Comstock Lode. Up the American River and down the Truckee.
…Yes, I realize why they were in that situation…but grown adult men {Co. leaders}, doing such…knowing all the while it was not the thing to be doing. Wasn’t it time to stop and negotiate what to do…
I can understand a bit of such operation, but 50…100 miles of simpleness…and with the crude machinery and all the rest to do such work…??
Having read most of the earlier Ambrose works, save for the textbook, I was quite disappointed in the transcon book and in fact didn’t finish it. The earmarks of “committee authorship” were so large as to remind me of Alfred E. Newman of Mad Magazine fame. That, and the fact that quotes were repeated in different chapters, was the turn off. He did much better on the WW II books, but I think that was more his own work and also not “rushed to press” like the railroad book.
Thanks for the link. That was an interesting bit to read. I see the book High Road to Promontory mentioned several times in that discussion. Is this a good book to learn more about the Pacific railroad? Can anyone suggest some other good books on the subject?
The continental railway in Canada was among other things a step to unify the Dominion and to establish sovereignty as the “Americans” were looking northward ----Much like Canada is doing in the Arctic with the Northwest Passage, seems the U.S. thinks land and sea within Canada’s Arctic Islands are International waters. ---- I would question whether the rock crossing the western mountains is any “harder” in the U.S than in Canada.
Murphy – the best book by far is “Empire Express”. The remainder are fairly interchangeable, except for Ambrose, which is not completely useless: it can serve as a bad example.
As a hobby within a hobby within a hobby, I collect histories of the transcontinental railroad. I have more than 20 so far.