The Transcontinental Railroad

On 10 May 1869, two locomotives faced one another at Promontory Summit in northern Utah while executives, workers, soldiers, journalists and visitors crowded the tracks. A telegraph connection carried news of the final spike across the country, and bells and guns answered in distant cities. The ceremony presented the United States with a powerful image of continental union.

The reality behind that moment was considerably more complicated.

The Transcontinental Railroad follows the creation of the first continuous railway connection across the American continent, from early route debates and Civil War legislation to the race between the Central Pacific and Union Pacific.

Gordon J. MacKenzie examines the political ambition, engineering achievement, corporate rivalry, financial corruption and extraordinary labour that built the iron road. Particular attention is given to Chinese workers in the Sierra Nevada, Irish and Civil War veteran crews, Mormon contractors, Black labourers and the Native nations whose homelands were transformed by railroad expansion.

The book explores the Pacific Railway Acts, Theodore Judah's Sierra route, the Sacramento Four, Thomas Durant, Grenville Dodge, Crédit Mobilier, the race across Utah and the Golden Spike ceremony. It also considers the railroad's enduring effects on migration, commerce, communication, Native sovereignty, the buffalo herds and the growth of national corporate power.

Accessible, balanced and substantial, The Transcontinental Railroad reveals both the achievement of continental connection and the human cost behind one of America's most powerful national legends.