First of all, Charles Crocker, the American railroad executive who founded the Central Pacific Railroad, made a $10,000 bet with Thomas Durant, the vice-president of the Union Pacific Railroad, that his workers could accomplish the impossible. In response, a large group of 4,000 workers, mostly made up of Chinese laborers, laid ten miles and 56 feet of track in one day on April 28, 1869. However, when the workers were celebrated for their accomplishment in a parade in Sacramento, the names of the eight Irish workers were recorded, but not a single Chinese worker's name was recorded.(5)
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In addition, Summit Tunnel, the sixth of the 15 tunnels that Chinese workers began working on in 1865, was the hardest and most dangerous tunnel construction. 1,695 feet long and 124 feet below the surface, the tunnel was a long and slow process and took two years to be completed, as they had to cut through solid granite in order to make the railroad. There were many occurrences of accidental explosions, as nitroglycerin, an explosive compound that was mixed on site, was very unstable. The workers labored throughout two of the harshest winters with blizzards and avalanches, killing many Chinese workers and interfering with the construction process.(6) The winters were so severe that, “in the spring, workers found the thawing corpses, still upright, their cold hands gripping shovels and picks and their mouths twisted with frozen terror.”(7)
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The first significant engineering challenge for the Central Pacific Railroad was Bloomer Cut, 38 miles away from Sacramento, and many Chinese workers worked on it during its construction between 1864 and 1865.(8) Bloomer Cut was dangerous work, as the workers were blasting and digging through steep terrain, and they "dug a trough through naturally cemented gravel and hard clay with picks, shovels and black powder."(9)
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Finally, starting in the summer of 1865, the three-mile Central Pacific roadbed around Cape Horn took a year to construct. This roadbed was built on the steep slopes of the Sierra Nevada at least 1300 feet high above the American River, dropping off between 45 and 75 degrees. Building the roadbed required hundreds of kegs of black blasting powder in order to lay the roadbed on a level surface.(10) There was and still is a controversy over whether Chinese workers were "lowered in baskets to place explosive charges at Cape Horn."(11)
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