The most repeated story about Chinese railroad labor shows workers lowered over a cliff in woven baskets to drill a ledge for the Central Pacific, and historians cannot confirm it. By 1867 Chinese workers were 80 to 90 percent of the workforce, and at Summit Tunnel they handled nitroglycerin mixed on site, a compound white crews largely refused. The episode lays out three competing scholarly positions on the basket legend.
Who's who
- Charles Crocker+2 more episodesCentral Pacific construction chief who hired Chinese workers
- James Harvey Strobridge+1 more episodeConstruction superintendent who came to rely on Chinese crews
- Hung WahAuburn labor contractor and headman on Central Pacific payrolls
- Samuel S. MontagueChief engineer whose reports never mention suspended workers
- Lewis M. ClementEngineer of the Summit Tunnel
- John R. GillissEngineer whose 1870 paper documented the Sierra tunnels
- James HowdenChemist hired to make nitroglycerin on site
Where it happens
- Cape Horn, American River, CaliforniaCliff grade site of the contested basket story
- Summit Tunnel, Donner Pass, CaliforniaAbout 1,660 feet of granite drilled by hand
- Sacramento, California+4 more episodesWhere Central Pacific broke ground in 1863
Timeline
- January 1864Earliest known Chinese names on Central Pacific payrolls
- 1865Trial gang of about 50 Chinese workers hired
- April 1866Nitroglycerin explosions in Panama and San Francisco; California bans its transport
- Fall 1867Summit headings meet off by about two inches
- May 1869Promontory Summit; Chinese crews lay the final rails
- 2012Stanford begins its Chinese railroad workers research project
Still debated
No construction-era document describes suspended workers at Cape Horn; skeptics conclude no such work occurred, while the Stanford project treats rope work as plausible but the iconic basket image as unproven.
transcontinental railroadchinese railroad workerscentral pacificcape hornnitroglycerinlegend and history
