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(explosions) NARRATOR: April 12, 1861, the Civil War had begun... a conflict that arose in part from Abraham Lincoln's dream of abolishing slavery. ♪ Now that the South had seceded, Lincoln seized the opportunity to pursue another dream... that of a railroad which would span the continent. The idea for a Transcontinental Railroad had been suggested as early as the 1830s, but real planning did not begin until the 1850s. Then, a little over a year after the start of the Civil War, Lincoln signed the Pacific Railroad Act. The act authorized private companies to build the Transcontinental Railroad -- the Central Pacific in the West and the Union Pacific in the East. These two entities competed for government money and land grants in a race to complete the most track. It was a huge undertaking that employed thousands and built up the vast unpopulated interior of the country. When completed, it moved goods and people at unimagined speeds, created government where none previously existed, and propelled the United States to a position of prominence on the world stage. ♪ The Union Pacific built track from the Missouri River to the west, crossing through Nebraska in what is now Wyoming. In the process, it laid the framework for an entire state. Along the way, instant towns popped up where the Railroad stopped to establish a watering or refueling location. Some of these communities eventually became the Wyoming cities we know today. Others disappeared as quickly as they were built. By the fall of 1867, the Union Pacific had reached the present-day state line. This was the End of Track... This was the beginning of Wyoming. ♪ After much haggling over the route of the Union Pacific, chief engineer and surveyor, Grenville Dodge proclaimed the 42nd Parallel as the most direct and practical. It lay about 100 miles south of the path historically navigated by bison and Indians, mountain men, and fur traders, Oregon Trail pioneers and Mormon immigrants. Dodge laid out as straight a line as possible, keeping it to no more than a four percent grade, ensuring the steam locomotives could efficiently pull their cars. Dr. Thomas Durant, an organizer of the Union Pacific and a long-standing schemer and speculator, was often at odds with Dodge. He had no incentive to build a straight route. His company suggested lines that were often sweeping oxbow curves and other wasteful configurations, to milk as much money from the federal government as possible and increase his own personal wealth. I think he's a pretty disreputable figure in the whole construction of the UP. Now that's not to say that there weren't a thousand other Thomas Durants involved in the gilded age during that time because there were just essentially no business ethics at all and there was no regulation of any of this stuff in those days either. The government paid the Union and Central Pacific in federal bonds at the rate of $16,000 per mile for flatland, $32,000 for foothills, and $48,000 for mountainous terrain. The two Railroads also received substantial government land grants. A 400 foot right of way and on either side of the tracks for 20 miles, the odd numbered sections of 640 acres of land, each section also included the mineral rights beneath the ground. The federal government retained the even numbered sections in an effort to keep an eye on the Railroad's business activities. The Railroad used this land for building side tracks, depots, and other infrastructure. They also sold lots to land speculators and new settlers, but building the most track as quickly as possible was of paramount importance in the race with the Central Pacific. PHIL: That first series of tracks across the country weren't built to last. Speed was of the essence. They needed to get the thing built. They had to throw down the ties, put on the rails, hammer in the spikes, and they had to do it fast. This substandard construction, along with equipment failure and human error, sometimes lead to disastrous consequences. These were the biggest and fastest machines ever built. When something went wrong, it often escalated into a massive accident involving derailment and lost lives. ♪ ♪ After a poor start from Omaha in 1865, in which only about 40 miles of track were laid, the firm of Jack and Dan Casement were hired in February 1866 to take charge of track laying. Short, stocky, and tough as nails, the two brothers were Civil War vets with track laying experience. As construction bosses, they quickly established a time table and a no nonsense work ethic that got the tracks moving westward. A year and a half later, they had spanned Nebraska and reached today's Wyoming border. But building a railroad wasn't just about track laying... A huge and varied labor force spread over the countryside, often hundreds of miles apart. PHIL: I think T.A. Larson put it best when he said that unlike a straight line of construction, these railroad crews were more like beads on a string, where there would be the surveyors out here in the front and then right behind them would be the graders, and then, a little bit further back would be the track layers. The surveyors labored in the western wilderness, laying out the exact line the Railroad would take from Dodge's general route. PHIL: The surveyors were, in many cases, people who were former military officers. A lot of them had learned their surveying skills commercially in the east prior to signing on with the UP. They lived like mountain men, working under the endless sky and living off abundant wild game, reveling in the freedom, the excitement, the danger of the wilderness. But many must have known this western Eden would change forever once the Railroad actually pushed through. MAN: "The time is coming, and fast, too, when in the sense it is now understood there will be no West." -- Arthur N. Ferguson, Union Pacific Survey Party In time, towns would sprout up, wild game would vanish, mountains and river banks would be stripped of trees, and Native Americans would be driven from their land. The Railroad would usher in fundamental change to the West. But it would also bring prosperity, farms and ranches, businesses and homesteads would begin to fill in the large empty region between the two coasts, long mistaken as the Great American Desert. The graders followed the surveyor's line, working with shovels and picks, teams of horses and scrapers to create a level foundation for the ties and rails. The work was tough, filling in natural depressions and often making cuts through solid rock. It was slow-going, but the Union Pacific had numbers on its side. In 1868, 3,000 graders worked on the line. Finally came the track layers, their construction camp was a small community in itself. Like grading, track laying was arduous, monotonous, and often dangerous. Up at dawn, done at dusk, six days a week. Sundays were the only day off for rest and relaxation, but it paid well -- between $2.50 and $4.00 per day, depending on the job. Each morning supply trains arrived with spikes, ties, rails, and fish plate connectors. Once these were off-loaded, track laying began. What came next was described by an east coast newspaper reporter, W.A. Bell... MAN: "At the word of command, the rail is dropped in its place right side up with care, while the same process goes on at the other side of the car. Less than 30 seconds to a rail for each gang and so four rails go down to the minute, quick work you say, but the fellows on the Union Pacific are tremendously in earnest. Close behind the first gang come the gaugers, spikers, bolters, and a lively time they make of it, it is a grand anvil chorus that those sturdy sledges are playing across the plains. (metal clanking) It is in a triple time, three stokes to spike. There are ten spikes to a rail, 400 rails to a mile, 1800 miles to San Francisco, 21 million times are those sledges to be swung. 21 million times are they to come down with their sharp punctuation before the great work of modern America is complete." ♪ On July 4, 1867, Grenville Dodge and his party rode west to a grassy plain in far western Dakota Territory. When Grenville Dodge came out to what is now Cheyenne, it was just a spot along Crow Creek and Grenville Dodge picked that particular spot because it happened to be 500 miles from Omaha. He took a look around and said, well, this will be a good a division point as any on this Transcontinental Railroad. A division point is going to mean a great deal because it's going to mean permanence. It's not going to be like a section house, where you have a water tank and maybe a telegraph key and a few people there to watch the track. There's going to really be an establishment there. Dodge and his crew began laying out streets for a town dominated by a 328 acre railroad complex. He called it Cheyenne, honoring the predominate tribe of the area. Dodge predicted that a new city would soon arise to rival Denver, 100 miles to the south. Little did he realize how quickly his prediction would come true. Word of a division point at Cheyenne quickly spread to the former end of track, or so-called "hell on wheels" towns east of it. When railroad construction moved on and business slowed down in some of these places, merchants often packed up their canvas and wood structures and shipped them west via the Railroad to the next end of track construction point. There they reassembled their buildings and got on with business. Honest merchants and settlers, as well as gamblers, outlaws, prostitutes, and other unsavory types flowed into Cheyenne in the late summer and fall of 1867. Lots that sold for $150 in August were going for $2500 by early November. Returning from a surveying expedition to the west just three months later, Dodge rode into town and was stunned. His campsite on this dusty prairie had been utterly transformed. It had a population of 1500 people. One month later, that figure would jump to nearly 5,000. A town had erupted out of this vast emptiness as if by magic. And a nickname for the place was born -- "The Magic City of the Plains." But magic wouldn't exactly describe Cheyenne's growing pains. MAN: "The activity of the place is surprising and the wickedness is unimaginable and appalling. This is a great center for gamblers of all shades, and roughs and troops of lewd woman and bullwhackers. Almost every other house is a drinking saloon, gambling house, restaurant or bawdy." -- Reverend Joseph W. Cook, 1868 When the Union Pacific Railroad first reached Cheyenne in late 1867, what is now Wyoming was still part of Dakota Territory. Soon there was a push to change that. On April 15, 1869, a territorial government was in place with Cheyenne as its capital. One of the interesting things about this is that the Railroad came to what became Wyoming before there was a Wyoming, and it hasn't happened very often where you had something like that and no political organization. So it really followed after the Railroad came to Wyoming that the territory was created. The spring of 1868 brought new challenges for Grenville Dodge and the builders of the Union Pacific Railroad. First and foremost was crossing the black hills, today's Laramie Mountains. ♪ ♪ In 1865, Dodge was scouting an area in the Laramie Mountains and discovered a unique geologic formation -- a pass leading downhill between the Crow Creek and Lodgepole Creek drainages. He named it Sherman Pass after his friend and Civil War General, William Tecumseh Sherman. It's an area that today is known as the Gang Plank. We are standing on the Great Plains, as I stand right here. About 200 feet to my right is the Rocky Mountains. It's a very low area of the Rocky Mountains and we're on a very, very high area of the Great Plains. The Great Plains lead without a break onto the Rocky Mountains. They form a bridge, a bridge that is called the Gang Plank. Had Dodge not discovered this location, this very narrow neck where the Great Plains meets the Rocky Mountains, it's highly likely that the Railroad would not have come through here at all. (train horn blaring) As construction crews moved up the Gang Plank, they eventually topped out at over 8,000 feet. The Union Pacific Railroad had made the grade. It had summited the Rockies. The town of Sherman quickly sprouted up around this high altitude mile post. It boasted a turn table and roundhouse, a depot with a Wells Fargo office, a newspaper, shops, and two hotels. I'm standing in the middle of a turn table at Sherman, Wyoming, 8,247 feet high. The turn table was actually tuned by human power. The locomotive would come on to the turn table, it was a bridge, very carefully balance it, and there was a center pivot right here, there were wheels on each end to help balance it, so you had three points of balance. But human beings, a man, maybe two, would be on each side, one side there, one side there. And by hand, would turn the entire locomotive. It took some power, but if the engine was carefully balanced, it could be done. ♪ In 1882, near Sherman Summit, the Union Pacific Railroad began building a massive granite pyramid to honor two brothers instrumental in turning the Transcontinental Railroad from dream to reality. We're at Sherman Summit in Wyoming. Behind me is the Ames Monument. The monument is 60 feet wide, 60 feet high, and is dedicated to Oakes and Oliver Ames -- two brothers who were extremely influential in the building of the Union Pacific Railroad. Oakes Ames was a U.S. congressman from Massachusetts who played a leading role in passing the legislation that created the Union Pacific Corporation. My great, great, great-grandfather was the Chief Financier of the Railroad. And his brother, Oliver, was the first president -- was the president during the time it was being built. Oliver Ames became president of the Union Pacific in 1866, winning out over his powerful adversary, Thomas Doc Durant, who nonetheless, managed to become vice president of the line. In early 1865, with the Union Pacific floundering under Durant's direction, President Lincoln asked Oakes Ames to step in and take charge. ANNA: It was a paper railroad in 1862, and by the time Lincoln called Oakes in, it was because he wanted to see the nation connected with this Railroad. He didn't want to lose California in the Civil War, and for the growth of the country, too. In the process, Oakes Ames, along with other congressmen, became involved in one of the biggest political scandals of the 19th century -- the Credit Mobilier fiasco. In 1864, Thomas Durant and businessman George Francis Train organized the Credit Mobilier Corporation of America, as a supposedly independent contracting and management company, to build the Union Pacific Railroad. In reality, Credit Mobilier allowed Union Pacific officials to reap great profits by charging the federal government outrageous construction fees and expenses without raising suspicions of corruption. Credit Mobilier stock was also distributed to select U.S. congressmen as bribes. After the Railroad was completed, the Credit Mobilier scandal was exposed. It rocked Washington D.C. Oakes Ames, because of his high profile, became a symbol for the scandal and was found guilty of bribery. ANNA: He was tried and he gave a beautiful defense. He went home and two months later, he died of a stroke. Do I think it came from that? Yes. I mean, the pressure was enormous, though you never know for sure. The congressmen who accepted the bribes were cleared of all charges and the scheme's organizers, including Dr. Thomas Durant, walked away scot-free. After cresting Sherman Summit, the grade was now downhill, but a new obstacle loomed just a few miles further west -- Dale Creek. It wasn't the creek itself that was the problem, it was the gorge it had created through geologic time -- 130 feet deep and some 700 feet across. But to even get to the chasm, the graders had to make a cut through tough granite. We're in the railroad cut, it's about 200 feet long. It's cut through solid granite, star drilled holes on either side. Maybe 15 feet deep. Right here, we have a gash put in by a star drill. A star drill is a long tube made of iron or steel with a star shape on the end, and men would hold this rod and other men would pound it with sledgehammers, dig it down a few inches and then twist it and pound again, and twist and pound again, and twist, and eventually, work their way down through solid Sherman granite. At the bottom of that, they would tamp black powder, set a fuse, everyone would run away. Boom! And you'd have a big opening that could then be excavated by hand. Once the cut was finished, the crew began building a bridge over Dale Creek Gorge. This is the site of the Dale Creek Trestle that was built here in 1867 and 1868, that winter. Originally it was 708 feet long from right here to beyond the wall that you see over there on the other side -- 708 feet. 125 feet from the creek bed to the rail, to the base of the rails. When the Dale Creek Bridge was finished on April 23, 1868, it was declared an engineering marvel, but those crossing it by train were less impressed with the accomplishment and more concerned for their own safety. WOMAN: "This trestle bridge looks like a light, frail thing to bear so great weight, but fears are not expressed because of the frail appearance of the bridge, but in regard to the tempest of wind, so fierce that we fear the cars may be blown from the track. In the providence of God, the wind decreased. Its terrible wail is subdued to pitiful sobs and sighs and we passed safely over the dreaded bridge." -- Ellen G. White Like so much of the hastily built Union Pacific Railroad, Dale Creek Trestle was replaced several times over the ensuing years and when the Railroad relocated the line in 1901, the last Dale Creek Bridge was removed. In the early spring of 1868, as Union Pacific track layers worked their way down the slope from Sherman Hill and Dale Creek, they encountered a newly staked out town. Chief Engineer Grenville Dodge dubbed it Laramie. That April, hundreds of speculators, entrepreneurs, and settlers awaited the Union Pacific's auction of town lots. 400 parcels sold within a few days. On May 9th, the first train chugged into town, its coaches filled with people. The freight cars were piled high with tents and disassembled wooden structures. "Hell on wheels" had arrived. MAN: "The first train had arrived in Laramie, in addition to a goodly number of respectable, law-abiding people who came there on, there arrived also a large number of the toughest characters that ever drew the breath of life. Barroom bums, thugs, garrotters, hold-up thieves and murderers from railway towns to the eastward were passengers on that train." -- W.O. Owen When steam locomotives whistled into early railroad towns, prevailing winds blew the smoke, soot, and burning embers across the landscape. That area became the less desirable part of town to live in... It became the "wrong side of the tracks." PHIL: So, even though the prevailing winds were out of the west and out of the north, the business community of Laramie was more or less built on the wrong side of the tracks, it was built on the east side of the tracks, and for many, many years, Laramie had the problem of embers and soot coming from those smokestacks of those locomotives, coming down and falling into the streets. Merchants and honest townspeople formed a provisional government in Laramie, but the lawless element also formed their own union. PHIL: Laramie, in the summer of 1868, was a pretty terrible place. There were these bar owners and these gambling joint operators that were essentially serving as town officials and as judges, and finally the more law-abiding members of the community decided that they had had enough of that and had to do something to take back the government, take back the law and order in Laramie. MAN: "Accordingly, a vigilance committee was organized. On the 18th of October, 1868, a raid was made at night and three of the ringleaders of the toughs -- Asa Moore, Conn Wagoner, and Ned Wilson, alias "Big Ned," were captured and hung. They were strung up and left hanging there for several hours after daybreak so the rest of the cutthroats might get the benefit of the execution and take warning." -- W.O. Owen Crime in Laramie eventually subsided, businesses began to flourish, the Railroad built infrastructure and small industry grew. East of the Union Pacific tracks, a brickfront business district arose, and in 1887, the University of Wyoming was founded. ♪ Several thousand track layers followed the easy grade north and west across the Laramie Plains later that spring of 1868. The route formed a long loop to the north of Elk Mountain and the Snowy Range. It followed a path where weather was milder and the terrain more favorable to building railroad tracks. Nevertheless, the Union Pacific train still encountered inclement weather; in Wyoming, snow was a constant threat three seasons out of the year. WOMAN: "This is indeed a fearful ordeal -- fastened here in a snowbank midway of the continent at the top of the Rocky Mountains. They're melting snow for the boilers and for drinking water. A train loaded with coal is behind us so there is no danger of our suffering from cold." -- Susan B. Anthony Snow trains outfitted with wedge-shaped snowplows were used to clear the way, but even then, hand shoveling was often required. The cuts were so narrow, they could only plow the snow once and then if they had to go back through, there wasn't any place to plow the snow so they had to hire men with shovels to dig these cuts out and it took 50, 60, 70 hundred men to do that. And some of them froze while they were doing that because of the wind and the cold. The Union Pacific eventually remedied the snow problem somewhat by emulating what the Central Pacific had done in the Sierra Nevada... they built snow sheds. Snow sheds helped keep the most vulnerable portions of the track free of snow. But even with this protection, trains still became stranded in the worst storms. WOMAN: "The train had moved up to Dale Creek Bridge and drawn into a long snow shed. Here we remained all night, and with the rarified air and the smoke from the engine, we almost suffocated, while the wind blew so furiously, we could not venture to open the doors." -- Susan B. Anthony (wind whistling) (Native American music) MAN: "We looked at it from a high ridge -- far off, it was very small, but it kept coming and growing larger all the time, puffing out smoke and steam. And as it came on, we said to each other that it looked like a white man's pipe when he was smoking." -- Porcupine, Warrior of the Northern Cheyenne (Native American music) The federal government encouraged Native people to allow the railroad across their traditional lands by signing the Fort Laramie Treaty in 1868. Nevertheless, a few marauding bands still caused problems. MAN: "A few days ago, four men were shot by the Indians and were brought into this post. One of them died from the effects of his wounds. Last night and during today, soldiers been digging his grave. Another of the wounded men I hear is not expected to live." -- Arthur N. Ferguson, Union Pacific Survey Party. As treaty after treaty were broken, the tribes began defending what they still had left. Europeans and the Plains tribes, the Sioux and Cheyenne, the Arapahoe and Shoshone, were on a collision course. It was a cataclysmic clash of two different mindsets, worldviews...the whole notion of economy, they were at, diametrically, they were at diametrical odds with one another. Tribal people did not recognize that these newcomers would address them in a multi-faceted approach, meaning treaties first, recognizing that everything will be done in a good way. The second, a military intervention. Third, a violation of treaties by all the newcomers. Fourth -- and here is where the condition of modernity plays a role -- the steel horse, as they used to call it, came across their lands. MAN: "We will build iron roads and you cannot stop the locomotive any more than you can stop the sun or the moon. And you must submit and do the best you can." -- General William Tecumseh Sherman MAN: "The railroad men have an infallible remedy for the Indian troubles... That remedy is extermination." -- The Chicago Tribune MAN: "We've got to clean the damn Indians out or give up. The government may take its choice." -- Grenville Dodge This agenda was accomplished by striking at the center of the Plains Indian culture. SERGIO: The buffalo, first and foremost, was not only a means of survival and food, but it had a sacred relationship with tribal people. It provided not only food, but implements, and every part of the animal was used, so when tribal people visually saw men on the iron horse using 50 caliber Sharps rifles, knocking these buffalo down by the thousands per day, how could people do this? It was such a spiritual affront which lead to a further demoralization among tribal people. It has been estimated that the west held as many as 15 to 60 million buffalo at the arrival of the Europeans. This number was severely depleted partially as a result of the Transcontinental Railroad. SERGIO: What had happened with the arrival of the steel horse was it divided the herds, the American Bison, and along with the division of the herds became the decimation of the herds by hunters who were providing food originally for the workers, but then it became just a big sport. This wholesale slaughter crushed the Indian insurgency as it broke their hearts and their culture. SERGIO: Once the bison were removed, decimated if I may, the marginalizing of Native America on reservations, all the while the iron horse, the Union Pacific, continued to move across the west. (train horn blaring) The construction crews were now west of the North Platte River, a waterless realm dominated by sagebrush and dry creek beds, alkali pools, and dust. It was an unforgiving land, yet fairly level with no major obstacles. Compared to crossing the Laramie Mountains, the work was relatively straightforward, but the summer temperatures were hellish...workers coughed and wheezed in the choking dust, others collapsed from heat stroke, horses and mules toppled over in the heat. MAN: "This is an awful place. Alkali dust knee deep and certainly the meanest place I have ever been in." -- Jack Casement, Track Laying Supervisor Amid this cruel geography, the hell on wheels town of Benton popped up in July of 1868, about ten miles east of present-day Rawlins. In its heyday, Benton would have a population of 3,000 people. Historians and authors have pointed it out as a hell on earth. It was a most miserable location. They couldn't have picked a worse possible site. Benton was just a temporary stop along the way and the Railroad decided not to do anything at Benton. They didn't put in a station. They didn't bother to even put in a water stop. One visitor referred to Benton as "nearer a reputation of Sodom and Gomorrah than any other place in America." MAN: "The streets were eight inches deep in white dust. As I entered the city of canvas tents and pole houses, the suburbs appeared as banks of dirty white lime and the new arrival with black clothes looked like nothing so much as a cockroach struggling through a flour barrel." -- John Beetle, Author and Journalist As the Union Pacific crews moved away from the town on their continuing construction journey west, businesses dismantled their portable buildings, folded up the canvas, and moved after them. Benton had become the Wyoming territory's first ghost town. Personally, I like to think of it as dying in November the 23rd when they finally took away its one major source of drinking material and the military closed all the liquor establishments. For us in Wyoming, that was it. The water was bad, but when you couldn't get a drink of whiskey, that did it, that was done. On his surveying expeditions before the railroad was built, Grenville Dodge was asked by General Ulysses S. Grant to bring along his friend, Brigadier General John A. Rawlins. RANS: Rawlins is dying of consumption, and the theory at the time was tuberculosis, or consumption, could profit by high mountain air. Grant is deeply concerned about his good friend and he talks him into taking this trip. Dodge's party makes it to the Platte River. It will take him awhile to cross it. They'll have a great deal of trouble getting horses and equipment across. They cross the river. There's a 16 mile ride through alkali flats. When they get here, everybody is thirsty. Particularly, so is Rawlins with the tuberculosis. The party finally located a spring of water and refreshed themselves. It was here that Rawlins voiced a statement that would name a town... "If anything, I'd like to have this spring named after me," and so it became Rawlins Springs. That's the way the city was until about, oh, I'd say 1870, when it just went to Rawlins. The Union Pacific decided Rawlins would become a division point and the town began to slowly grow. DAN: When the people came to Rawlins, they settled on the south side of the tracks. They weren't going to buy any lots because of what happened at Benton, they could see what happened there. And so until the UP started building the roundhouses, the machine shops, the hotels, and station houses, they wouldn't buy. Rawlins may not have been a temporary hell on wheels town like Benton, but it had its own measure of notoriety more than a decade later in the case of Big Nose George. George Parrott, also known as "Big Nose George," was a member of the Powder River Country Outlaw Gang. In August of 1878, they rode south and attempted to derail and rob a Union Pacific train east of Medicine Bow, Wyoming. When the rail they had loosened was discovered, the robbery was aborted and the gang slunk off to a temporary hideout at nearby Elk Mountain. Within days, two Carbon County lawmen had tracked them to the camp, but the outlaws bushwhacked and killed them. With blood in their hands, the gang fled and soon disbanded. By 1880, Parrott was in Montana. After boasting of killing the Wyoming lawmen, he was arrested and taken to Rawlins where he was charged with murder. And what the good folks here, good folks in quotes, are concerned about is this criminal element is going to break George out. The citizens took the law into their own hands, overpowering the jailer and broke George out. RANS: George is taken to Front Street and he will be lynched. It'll take them two tries. The crowd themselves are as inept at lynching as he was at train robbery. But they stand there and watch that poor devil struggle as gravity overcomes him and weakness and he chokes to death. That noose was so loose that it worked back and forth and took his ears off. And that shows in the death mask, he's without ears in the death mask. The body of Big Nose George was collected by two local physicians. Dr. T.G. McGee was eager to study a criminal brain. Dr. John Osbourne had less scientific uses for the remains. While Dr. McGee is doing what is considered a scientific study, Dr. Osbourne gets a little bored and he retains the flesh, principally from the chest, and other parts of the body, and sends it off to Colorado and has it tanned. And when it returns to him, he has different things made from it. He decorates a leather doctor's bag and he makes this wonderful pair of shoes. He was very proud of them, made no bones about what they were. The shoes are an oxford, part leather and part human flesh. He would go on, 11 years later, to become Governor of the state of Wyoming. While at his official inauguration ball, he did wear those shoes despite the dress requirements. He had brown and white shoes on with his formal dress. In the fall of 1868, the Railroad pushed west of Rawlins to an area of Wyoming with abundant coal seams. People knew about coal in Wyoming for a long time before the Railroad was even thought of as going through this area. The Indians used coal, the forts that were built along the way used coal, and trappers used coal, and overland tourists used coal, so it was there. One town eventually became the center of this coal mining region. In Rock Springs, if you look at the core of the town, it was not laid out by the company and lots weren't sold the same way they were in some other parts. There were ten mines in the downtown area of Rock Springs so if you have driven around at all, you realize the roads are very, very hard to follow. They paved the miner's paths. The joke is that the city planner at the time was drunk and was riding a blind mule when he laid the streets out. Wyoming coal was a financial boon for the Union Pacific. It not only fueled its locomotives, it also heated its buildings and was marketed and shipped across the country. Working the mines was difficult and dangerous work. Shifts lasted ten hours a day. To keep costs down and prevent unionization, the Union Pacific employed immigrants from Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, and Germany to work its mines. In the 1870s, Chinese workers were brought in. Eventually there were more Chinese than Europeans in Rock Springs and a bustling Chinatown emerged. Initially, they were simply accepted as another worker and there wasn't a great deal of negative feeling about them. But over time as the Railroad took advantage of their cheaper labor and pushed other groups out, negative feelings began to develop. In 1885, the Union Pacific cut the piecework rate paid to miners by one-fifth, but made no corresponding reduction in prices charged by the company stores. Tensions rose. On September 2nd in 1885, a big kerfluffle developed in the mines. The experienced miners knew which part of a mine was safe and there weren't a lot of places in a mine in those days that would be safe. It was prized to get a hold of one of those sections and then it would be yours to work. Well, what happened was that a couple of white miners had established one of these rooms as theirs and there was a mix-up or simply a reassignment -- we don't know what exactly transpired -- but some Chinese, while the white miners were gone, were placed in those rooms. And when the white miners returned, the Chinese said we're not leaving. This is our room. That argument became violent with the picks and shovels being used as weapons down in the mine. So the mine shut down, they said, send everybody home, we don't want this blowing out of proportion. But the white miners apparently went down to the bars and talked about this a little bit more, and in an organized way, went out and attacked Chinatown. Burned it to the ground. Many Chinese were burned with it. Some of the Chinese were just returning home from work at the other mines and didn't really know what was going on. However, they saw these people fleeing so they fled over the hills, got on the trains, and went to Evanston. The mob mentality is such an ugly thing. One woman was chasing one of the Chinese who she had taught English to. She was carrying her baby and had to put her baby down to shoot at him. She was a poor shot so fortunately he escaped, but it just is amazing what people will do. Federal troops were called in to quiet the situation and ultimately, troops were actually stationed here at Camp Pilot Butte, between the south part of town and Chinatown. We were the only occupied town in the United States from about 1885 for 14 years. As the Railroad continued west, the landscape changed from a relatively waterless, featureless sagebrush prairie to a landscape dominated by towering rock formations and a large fast-flowing river. WOMAN: They were building down the Bitter Creek Valley from Rock Springs and I'm sure that when they hit the Green River, they were so happy to have clean water again because the Green River, of course, is a very fast-flowing, very good water source. On its banks, a tent and adobe village of 2,000 people awaited the track layers. Green River City... It had been established by a Mr. Samuel Field and other entrepreneurs who filed homestead claims before the Railroad arrived. They realized the company would need the water from the Green River and they assumed it would be a division point. The powerful Union Pacific wasn't pleased. Suddenly, this lucrative little town that they planned on selling lots to business people, didn't belong to them. And so as a result of that, the Union Pacific decided rather than making Green River the division point that they had planned, they moved it out to a place called Bryan. Bryan was an especially nasty hell on wheels town. During one five-day period, there was "a man for breakfast," as the newspaper termed it, meaning a corpse in the street every morning. Now Bryan was an acceptable substitute in most ways because it was on a river, and of course, the water was extremely important. However, the Blacks Fork River, which Bryan is on, is a much smaller river. In fact, it's a tributary to the Green. And so, they happily existed in Bryan for about four years before they had a dry summer, the Blacks Fork River dried up and they were forced to come to an accommodation with Field and company to bring the division point back to Green River. The entrepreneurs had turned the tables on the mighty Union Pacific with a little help from Mother Nature and Green River City became a railroad town. West of Green River, the Union Pacific pushed on towards the Utah border and its eventual rendezvous with the Central Pacific at Promontory Summit. The little town of Piedmont was one stop along the way. Piedmont started out as a tent town. After the Union Pacific chose it as a watering and wood refueling stop, it began to grow. A small village arose with stores and businesses, a schoolhouse, hotel, and four saloons. But its most distinguishing landmark were the charcoal kilns. Built by Moses Byrne in 1869 to supply charcoal for the iron smelting industry in Utah, these conical limestone kilns measured 30 feet across and 30 feet high. Only three of the original 40 kilns remain. At the height of productivity, the kilns produced 100,000 bushels of charcoal a year. Most of it shipped via the Union Pacific Railroad. The last Transcontinental Railroad town in Wyoming lay just a few miles east of the Utah border. Evanston was named after Union Pacific Division Engineer, James A. Evans. The Railroad designated Evanston as a division point. Unlike many other tent cities along the line, its future was assured. A roundhouse, depot, and extensive railyards were built. In December of 1868, they hit what is now called Evanston and I can't imagine living here, the weather conditions in December. They built a roundhouse in Evanston and it was a wonderful stone building with arched doorways and it stood, from where we're talking today in this roundhouse in Evanston, it stood about 500 yards from where we are today. It had a manual turn table and that really gave Evanston some permanence; once that roundhouse was established, then you soon saw, on the west side of the tracks in Evanston, you saw the commercial buildings begin to be erected and Evanston grew rapidly after that point. In 1887, two water ponds near Evanston were built. These were called the Bear ponds, for they received water by diverting the Bear River. When winter arrived and the ice attained the proper thickness, it was cut into 22 inch cakes. JIM: And they had these massive two or three-story wooden structures to store the ice. They would take a team of horses out there, cut the ice into great-big blocks, store them in these icehouses with sawdust and as the trains went east to west with perishable goods during the summer months, they would put the ice in there for refrigeration. And so it was done. On May 10, 1869, as the ceremonial golden spike was driven into place at Promontory Summit, Utah, a great cheer arose from those in attendance. News of the event was telegraphed across the nation. So when that golden spike was pounded in on the 10th of May of 1869, it's little wonder that people around the country celebrated and rang bells in churches and everyone stopped and marveled the achievement, because it had been a pretty short period of time. It had only been seven years since the passage of the first Pacific Railroad Act that had authorized the project, and here, just in the short span of seven years, they'd gone from essentially stage coach travel, to, for all intents and purposes, a modern railroad. For many, the building of the Transcontinental Railroad was a sign of the Nation's emerging greatness. Ideas of manifest destiny, national unity, mastery of nature, and technical superiority were all embodied in the mammoth undertaking that had finally reached completion. In the end, the Union Pacific had laid 1,087 miles of track; the Central Pacific, 690 miles of track. The Union Pacific had won the race. Taken as a whole, the Transcontinental Railroad was the greatest engineering feat of the 19th century. It was transformational. A journey that used to take months could now be traveled in mere days. A new world was dawning. Time and distance had shrunk, and America was moving into a bold new future. In Wyoming territory, as the railroad crews and the assorted hangers-on moved westward, the population declined. In 1868, at the peak of railroad construction, the territory had a population of about 40,000. By mid-1869, a mere 8,000 remained. Eventually, the population would begin to grow again. Over 62,000 settlers and ranchers, merchants and cowboys would call Wyoming home by the time it achieved statehood on July 10, 1890. The track now stretched endless across the width of the state. From Cheyenne to Evanston, towns strung out like gems on a vast steel necklace. The future was set. It was time for Wyoming to truly begin. ♪

Info

Channel: Wyoming PBS

Views: 197,560

Rating: 4.7393074 out of 5

Keywords: Transcontinental Railroad, Wyoming PBS, Tom Manning, Wyoming, Railroad, Union Pacific

Id: jUDv87_LjCs

Channel Id: undefined

Length: 60min 44sec (3644 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 10 2013